


burn brighter than a hellraiser

by Yuu_chi



Series: the devil you know [1]
Category: Overwatch (Video Game)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Demons, Crossroads Deals & Demons, Demon!Jesse, M/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-12-21
Updated: 2018-05-23
Packaged: 2019-02-18 01:01:09
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 6
Words: 21,455
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13089141
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Yuu_chi/pseuds/Yuu_chi
Summary: I am going to die like this, he thinks, one hand tangled in Jesse’s shirt and the other latched onto one of the hands cupping his face.I’m going to die kissing a demon alone in the snow with only my dead brother for company.





	1. Chapter 1

By the time Hanzo can smuggle his brother out of the family home Genji has been dead for three days.

He’d never realized how heavy a person is when they’re nothing but cold flesh and empty veins. Body moving was for the hired guns of the family, not the heir, and Hanzo is not a small man by any means, but neither is Genji. By the time he places him at the crossroads his arms are burning and he fears he will never get the smell of death out of his shirt.

It’s probably no less than he deserves, really. Hanzo hasn’t slept in at least as long as Genji has been gone and he’s starting to think he never will again.

The gravel and grit bite into his nail beds as he claws out a patch in the middle of the dirt road but it’s so cold he can barely feel it. Gently, he takes the small wooden box from his pocket and tucks it into the hole.

For a second he just kneels on the frozen ground, one hand around Genji’s icy wrist and the other pressed into the shapeless mound in the dirt. If Hanzo had thought he’d been scared when he’d made the choice to do this, it’s nothing compared to how he feels now. He’s terrified this won’t work. He’s terrified it _will_.

Beside him Genji lays still and unmoving. Days kept buried in the snow out back have kept the decomposition from setting in, but there is not a soul on earth who would mistake the deathly pallor of his face for life. It’s hard to reconcile this _thing_ with the vibrant creature Genji has always been.

Hanzo takes in a breath, squeezes the wrist he holds, and gets to his feet.

It’s dark and cold and he’s all alone on this out-of-the-way road. He licks his lips and says, “I want to make a deal.”

For a second there’s only silence and Hanzo stays still as a rock. Has he messed it up? Has he forgotten something? Has he been lied to? Was this a fool’s errand? Was Genji -.

“Well, ain’t you a sight for sore eyes, sugar. Sure been awhile since I’ve seen somebody as gorgeous as you waltzing onto my turf.”

The voice comes from behind him and Hanzo spins around whip quick. He’d left his bow at home for any number of reasons, but he reaches for it on reflex alone. Everything around him crackles like fire and he can smell brimstone in the air.

The demon lets out a low whistle, clapping slowly as he swaggers forward. Hanzo stares at him stupidly. “Pretty reflexes to match a pretty face.” It smiles at him and its eyes flicker black for a second. “I’m afraid to say, I don’t think they’d do you much good though, darlin’.”

If Hanzo had the space in his brain to think about what a demon may have looked like, this is not the image he would have picked.

He’s tall, taller than Hanzo for sure, and a mix between buff and lean. His shoulders are very broad, Hanzo can’t help but notice abstractly, and there’s the perfect amount of stubble on his face.

He’s also wearing a red cape and a cowboy hat. Hanzo is fairly certain that when the thing moves closer he can hear the jingle of spurs. He’s not entirely sure what to make of that.

“You - you came,” Hanzo says and he drops his twitching hand from his back with effort.

The demon quirks a brow at him. “Sure did, sugar. You called, and it’d be awful rude not to come see what all the fuss is about. Ain’t often I get many visitors these days.” The demon sticks out a hand. “Pleasure to meet you Mister Hanzo Shimada. My name’s Jesse.”

Hanzo tries very hard not be visibly disturbed, but he mustn’t do too great of a job because Jesse’s face breaks out into a grin that borders on the maniacal. He withdraws his hand and uses it to tip his hat out of his face. “Shoot sweetheart, you ain’t gotta be afraid of little ol’ me. I’m about as harmless as they come.”

Hanzo sincerely doubts that. “I’m here to make a deal.”

Jesse’s grin stretches wider if at all possible. “So you said.” He tilts his head, considers Hanzo first from one angle than another. Slowly, he begins to circle him. “This would be about that nasty business with your family, I’d wager.”

“How did you -.”

Jesse snorts and, for the first time, looks down at Genji’s body. “Well, unless this is an awful poor excuse for a sacrifice, it wasn’t hard to guess.” He nudges Genji with the toe of his boot like he’s no more than garbage.

Hanzo steps forward without thinking about it. “Do not,” he says dangerously, wrapping his fingers around Jesse’s wrist. His skin is hot enough to burn. Hanzo can feel blisters breaking out on his palm. “He is my _brother_.”

Jesse laughs and makes no move to escape. If anything, he seems amused, maybe a little impressed. “Oh darlin’, there’s only one of us here who’s got little brother’s blood on his hands, and it sure as all hell ain’t me.”

That stings more than it should and Hanzo fights back the urge to snap Jesse’s wrist out of petty revenge alone. It is not something he imagines might go well for him. “Well,” he says, “can you … save him?”

The look Jesse gives him is almost pitying. “Sweetheart, ain’t nothing there to save. That boy is deader than a sack of puppies that’s been through a meat grinder.”

Hanzo’s heart plummets so fast that he can feel it shattering at his feet. “Then -.”

“- But,” Jesse interrupts, “I’ll tell you what I can do. You better listen, because it’s a one of a kind sorta offer. Going very fast.”

Hanzo dares to feel hope. “I’m listening.”

Jesse grins at him, takes a step in closer and uses the hold Hanzo has on his wrist to pull him right up against his chest. “I can bring him _back_. Not whole, and not without a good bit of trauma, but it’ll be his soul and his shattered remnants of a body. Not a bad deal, considering what you’ve done to the poor boy.”

Hanzo deeply does not want to consider what he’d done to the poor boy. It’s been days, and the memories are still so fresh that he can scarcely squeeze any other thought in beside them. He’s been hearing Genji’s last breath rattling about his skull since it’d slipped from his lips.

But with this Genji will be _alive_. Hanzo won’t be absolved, Hanzo will _never_ be absolved, but his brother will continue to exist, and there is precious little else Hanzo cares about in the scheme of things. It’s a selfish sort of thinking, but he’s a selfish sort of man, and he’d made peace with that long ago.

It’s almost too much to hope for. Jesse with his blistering skin and black eyes is looking more like an angel to him with every passing moment.

“Please,” Hanzo says through numb lips. “I - I will give you whatever you want. If you bring him back, anything I have is yours.”

Up close like this, Hanzo can see the exact way Jesse’s eyes go from warm whisky brown to black. It’s like watching a forest burn to charcoal, terrifying and exhilarating in turns. “Oh sugar,” Jesse murmurs, “you’ve gotta learn to watch who you promise your life away to.”

“Anything,” Hanzo insists, heart pounding. He lets go of Jesse’s wrist and grabs at his shirt. “For my brother, I will give you anything you ask.”

Jesse hisses and suddenly his hands are on Hanzo’s cheeks. They burn something fierce and Hanzo can hardly think through the sudden, unstoppable pain. When Jesse speaks, his voice is warped and rusty and Hanzo doesn’t know if it’s just the misfiring synapses in his brain or something darker.

“It’s a deal, sweetheart,” Jesse says, and holds Hanzo still as he kisses him.

Jesse’s lips taste like salt. The rattling of Genji in Hanzo’s head grows louder and louder and louder until there are tears prickling at his eyes and it’s all he can do to hold onto Jesse to stay upright. There’s something foul and awful twisting in his gut, knotting his insides up like ribbons and shredding what’s left behind.

Jesse pries his mouth open. Hanzo cannot think beyond the confusing, all-encompassing pain.

_I am going to die like this_ , he thinks, one hand tangled in Jesse’s shirt and the other latched onto one of the hands cupping his face. _I’m going to die kissing a demon alone in the snow with only my dead brother for company_.

The shrieking in his head hits a shrill crescendo that rattles his very bones - and then silence. Abrupt and awe-inspiring silence.

Jesse pulls away and Hanzo cannot help but gasp for frigid winter air.

Jesse licks his lips and steps back, his fingers trailing over Hanzo’s chin. “It’s done,” he says, voice rough. “Everything you have and everything you _are_ is mine Hanzo Shimada, and I want you to be warned I am not the kind of man you should try and cross.”

“You’re not a man at all,” Hanzo rasps, pressing a hand to his sore throat.

Jesse tips back his head and laughs, delighted. “Oh, the _mouth_ on you, sweetheart. I see this being a good partnership for us both; very profitable.”

Before Hanzo can think of a single damn thing to say to that, Jesse has bent down and scooped Genji up like a ragdoll. “What are you -.”

“Gotta take the little toy soldier back to the tinkerers,” Jesse says, slinging Genji over his shoulder. “Boy ain’t gonna fix himself.”

The doubt Hanzo feels is sudden and crushing. “And he’ll be alright? You will bring him back?”

“I’ll bring him back to life,” Jesse confirms. “But if you’re asking whether I’ll bring him back to _you_ \- well, that’s a question for you to answer.” He gives Genji a shake and Hanzo has to remind himself that Genji is well and truly _dead_ and there’s nothing Jesse can do to make it worse. “The brother is your part of the deal; you tell me what you want done with him.”

_Bring him back_ , Hanzo thinks. _He is my only friend. I will be lost without him._

The effort it takes to hold those words in is monumental. Something must show on his face because for an instance the devil may care attitude of Jesse’s slips. “I’m in a generous sort of mood,” he says. “Must be those killer lips of yours. You just tell me what you want here, and I’ll make it happen. Little brother can come back to you none the wiser that you were the one who sent him away in the first place.”

Hanzo cannot lie. He is more tempted by that offer than he has been by anything else in his life. But -

“No,” he says. “Just save him. What Genji does next is up to him. I have no right to his life anymore.”

“Seems to me,” Jesse says, “that should be his call to make.”

Hanzo does not reply. After a second Jesse sighs and adjusts Genji over his shoulder one last time. Genji’s arms swing uselessly behind Jesse’s back.

_A puppet,_ Hanzo thinks, _a puppet with its strings cut._

“Well, I better get a move on,” Jesse says. He reaches out and pats Hanzo’s face. The teeth in his smile are unnervingly sharp and when he talks again his voice is as thick as syrup. “You’ll be hearing from me real soon, sweetheart. Real soon.”

“Just save my brother,” Hanzo says more bravely than he feels. “And then you may take whatever you wish.”

Jesse laughs. His eyes are black again. He turns around and Hanzo gets one last sick look at Genji empty and broken. “Real soon,” Jesse says one more time, and then a breeze picks up out of nowhere. Hanzo closes his eyes on reflex, shielding himself with an arm, and when he opens them again Jesse is gone, and with him Genji.

It’s just Hanzo alone in the snow of the crossroads.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i've been working on this fic for damn near months my friends and after much thinking i decided it works far better as a multichapter than a (very lengthy) oneshot. before anybody gets too excited though, it's still a wip. i've written nowhere near as much as i'd like, please take pity on my poor weary soul. going forward, the chapters will be longer than the opening one, which is more a preface than anything. 
> 
> i'm sure demon!mccree has probably been done to death, but i really wanted to have a shot at it myself, so i hope one or two people out there are still interested in this nowhere near original concept. 
> 
> if you ever wanna ask me anything or just talk, feel free to stop by at tumblr, my username is glenflower!


	2. Chapter 2

Hanzo does not hear anything more from either Jesse or Genji for months.

In that time he leaves Japan, scattering a trail of Shimada corpses behind him as goes and takes up work as a bounty hunter. He steers well and truly clear of Asia where his face is handed out to mercenaries left, right, and centre.

It is not the life Hanzo has always wanted, it is barely a life at all, but it is better than the alternative. After Jesse had left, taking with him the remains of all that mattered to Hanzo, he had found he had no real reason to stay with the clan.

They’d asked enough of him, and he’d given them too much.

He’s sitting on the back step of some old hovel in the Alaskan wilderness, steadily blowing smoke rings into the chilly air, when he hears the jingle of spurs behind him.

“What is it with you and the snow, darlin’? You got something against a nice tropical getaway?”

Jesse sits down beside him easily. Hanzo does not look away from the wisps of his smoke slowly thinning in the air. “It is not always snowy in Hanamura,” he says. “And Alaska was … unplanned. This is just a momentary breather.”

Jesse gives a low whistle, leaning back on his palms. The deck creaks beneath him. “A breather, huh? Is that what we’re calling it when you’ve left a pile of bodies knee-high in the middle of America?”

Hanzo sucks in another lungful of smoke and carefully blows it out. “Perhaps.”

It’s silent for a second. Hanzo tries to wait him out, but even without Genji’s blood still fresh on his hands and his mind no longer in a hectic frenzy he does not have the patience of the spawn of hell.

He leans forward and taps the smoky tobacco out into the snow. It sizzles and hisses. “My brother?”

Jesse’s smile splits his face and he leans forward, resting his chin on the palm of his hand. “Alive,” Jesse says. “As I told you he would be, sweetheart.”

“It’s been half a year,” Hanzo says before he can stop himself.

Truth be told, Hanzo had begun to wonder in his worst moments if the whole thing had been a hallucination. If Genji was still buried in the shallow grave he’d dug for him after their fight, if Jesse was nothing more than too much alcohol and not enough sleep playing havoc with his brain.

Hanzo had never been the imaginative one though. That had always been Genji. Hanzo was the one who sat quiet and attentive, ready and willing to take on the family burden. Genji was the one who was always off climbing trees and playing at being a ninja.

Summoning a crossroads demon was the kind of thing Genji could have made up; it was not something Hanzo’s mind, even as feverish and drunk as he could be, would ever dream of.

“Are you saying you missed me?” Jesse laughs, and he leans forward to pinch one of Hanzo’s cheeks playfully only for Hanzo to bat his hand away viciously. It only serves to make him laugh harder.

“I’m saying,” Hanzo grits out irritably, “that I was beginning to wonder if you weren’t a man of your word.”

“Aw shucks,” Jesse drawls. “Weren’t you the one who reminded me I’m not a man at all?”

Hanzo scowls and Jesse grins and relaxes back on his hands. “Relax, darlin’. It’s all taken care of you. Your brother’s alive and kicking. Quite the spitfire, that one. You two are a lot alike, ya’know.”

“We’re nothing alike,” Hanzo says shortly, getting to his feet. The snow crunches beneath the heavy soles of his boots.

“Now, c’mon, your brother ain’t that bad.”

Hanzo smiles at him and it feels as cold as the weather. “That is not what I meant, demon. Perhaps you are not all knowing after all.”

Jesse raises a brow at him, studying him thoughtfully. “Gotta keep it interesting for you.”

Hanzo snorts. “I do not know how much more ‘interesting’ I can fit in my busy schedule right now.”

“Squeeze it in between brooding and your morning sulking,” Jesse suggests, getting to his feet and brushing the loose snowflakes from his pants.

Hanzo watches him, but Jesse seems perfectly content to stretch, squinting out towards the sun thoughtfully. Hanzo knows he should hold his tongue, for his own good, but he can’t quite manage. “Is that it then?”

“Is what it?” Jesse asks.

“Did you just come here to banter? Are you not here to collect what you are owed?”

Jesse blinks at him. “Shit, honey. Don’t be in such a hurry to sign away that life of yours.”

Hanzo sniffs. “I was under the impression I already had. I do not wish to delay the inevitable.”

Jesse tucks his hands into his pocket and looks him and down consideringly. “Well, _darlin’,_ ” he says, laying the drawl on heavy and thick. “It’s a good thing that’s not your choice now, ain’t it?”

Hanzo bristles, straightens his back and fights the urge to reach for the knife strapped to his ankle. “I do not need your _pity_ ,” he spits. “I -.”

Jesse moves so fast that Hanzo doesn’t even realize it until there’s a hand wrapped around his neck, a heavy thumb pressing in at the hollow of his throat. Hanzo freezes instantly.

“You’re _mine_ ,” Jesse says, leaning in close. He gives his hand a small squeeze and Hanzo’s breath catches. “If you think I’m human enough to _pity_ you, than you’ve still got some learning to do. You’re an investment, and I’ll decide when and what I do with you on my own time, understand?”

Hanzo stares at him. Jesse’s face is impassive, and his eyes are inky black. The hand around his throat is very big and Hanzo knows it could break him in half before he could so much as blink.

“I understand,” Hanzo says.

They stand like that for a moment longer, staring each other down like they’re daring one another to be the first to move. Jesse gives a little squeeze to the nape of his neck, and drops his hand. The grin is back on his face like it’d never left at all. It’s starting to unnerve Hanzo more than he has the words to explain.

“I’m glad we had this talk, Shimada,” Jesse says and between one blink and the next he’s gone.

Slowly, Hanzo sits down.

He does not get up for a long, long time.

.

Hanzo continues to live his life on borrowed time.

Genji is never too far from his mind, and with him, Jesse. He cannot stop glancing over his shoulder no matter where he is, just waiting for the heavy hand on his arm and the sharp jingle of spurs.

It’s like being haunted by a ghostly cowboy. Hanzo cannot say he’s a fan.

He leaves America, and with it the extra digits on his bounty, and works his way across Europe. It occurs to him that he has no idea what he’s doing outside of running away from all his problems and it climaxes in a drunken panic attack on a rooftop in Russia.

He’s drinking some truly terrible local moonshine that leaves his throat feeling raw and his insides numb. He’s sitting two feet away from the chimney, swinging his legs over the edge, and he cannot help but wonder what would happen if he were to fall right now.

Would Jesse let him die? Would he take whatever tattered remnants of a soul Hanzo had left and take it to some place dark and terrible? Some place he’d never see his brother again?

It’s been nearly a year since the deal, and he doesn’t think he made the wrong choice, could never begrudge Genji his life like that, but it’s all starting to get … too much. Hanzo has no home, no family, no friends. He’s done nothing but wander and kill and hide and he’s terrified that this is all that he’s going to have left to him until Jesse comes to collect.

The ground is very far away. A hundred feet or so, Hanzo estimates. He is sitting atop a _very_ tall building. He probably wouldn’t even feel the impact. It’d be quick; so, so quick.

Hanzo doesn’t even realize he’s begun to hyperventilate until a hand settles along the back of his neck. “Breathe,” Jesse says into his ear, voice thick and heavy. “C’mon, breathe with me here, Hanzo.”

_I am breathing,_ Hanzo thinks irritably as he tries to coach his lungs through the suddenly alien motions. His vision twists, the ground beneath him falls even further away, and Hanzo leans over to puke right between his knees.

Jesse murmurs something in his ear again but Hanzo cannot hear it. It doesn’t seem important anyway, because Jesse just keeps rubbing his shoulders until the world twists itself back into some semblance of rightness.

“You are not welcome here,” he gasps when he finally manages to find his voice.

“I’m welcome wherever I please,” Jesse says, and he sits down beside Hanzo, spurs clicking in the breeze. “Some thanks I get for saving your ungrateful life.”

Hanzo scoffs. “I would not have jumped.”

“Sure, sugar,” Jesse says. “But leaning over the edge like that, I reckon you might have fell.”

Hanzo ignores him. “Why are you here?”

“Just passing through,” Jesse says ambiguously, which cannot be anything even approaching truth. Hanzo is too busy breathing, keeping himself from puking again, to do anything more than give a faint glare. Jesse gives him a second and then adds, “You doing okay over there, sugar?”

Hanzo’s glare turns into a scowl. The beating of his heart seems to have finally steadied though, so he says, “I was doing fine to begin with.”

There’s the snap of a lighter. From the corner of his eye Hanzo sees a flash of red, and he hears the hiss of a cigar catching on a flame. “Uh huh,” Jesse says, drawing the words out long and slow. “Sure thing, buttercup.”

Hanzo cannot hold back the look of utter disgust on his face and beside him Jesse starts to laugh.

“Do not,” Hanzo says, “ever call me that again.”

“What about muffin? Angel? Cupcake?”

“You know my name, I do not see what is wrong with addressing me with that.”

Jesse blows out an ashy cloud and Hanzo watches him carefully. It may just be his imagination, but he thinks he sees something dark and awful moving in the smoke.

“It’s a matter of affection, darlin’,” Jesse drawls.

Hanzo raises an unimpressed brow at him. “Affection? Do not be absurd, demon.”

Jesse rolls his eyes and leans sideways slightly to stub his cigar out on the rooftop between them. Hanzo expects him to flick it to the ground, but instead he blows on the smoldering end and tucks it into one of his seemingly endless pockets.

“How about we make a deal then?” He asks.

Hanzo lets out a loud bark of laughter. “A deal?” He repeats. “I don’t think I have anything left to offer you.”

Jesse smiles wryly. “Not that kind of deal,” he says. “The kind of deal where you call me by my name and I’ll call you by yours.”

Hanzo frowns at him, but Jesse’s face is as impassive as stone and just as impossible to read.

In truth, he hadn’t even noticed he hadn’t been calling Jesse by his name until this very second. He isn’t surprised.

Hanzo has always been very good at keeping people at arm’s length, and now is certainly not the time to buck the habit. He doesn’t want to go forgetting exactly what Jesse is, that he’s nowhere near as human as he looks. Better men than Hanzo have fallen victim to complacency, and after everything he has survived he doesn’t want to go out on the blade of his own foolishness.

Still, it’s a fairly cheap price to pay to never hear those disgusting nicknames from Jesse’s mouth again.

“I will accept this,” Hanzo says as primly as he can manage while swaying in the wind. It is occurring to him now that he may perhaps not be as fine as he’s been pretending because Jesse keeps swimming in and out of focus and he is largely certain that has more to do with the alcohol he’s consumed than Jesse’s demonic abilities. He pauses for a second and then thinks to add, “Jesse.”

It’s difficult to see between the gloom and his double vision, but he’s fairly certain he sees Jesse smile. “Alright,” Jesse says, getting to his feet. “Enough of this. Come on.”

Hanzo allows himself to be tugged to his feet. “What are you doing?”

“I think you’ve had your quota of drinking morosely on top of tall buildings for now,” Jesse says. “I think it might be best to take you home to sleep this off.”

The dazed drunkenness isn’t quite big enough to hold back the instinctual flare of alarm that sets a fire beneath his skin. Hanzo clumsily rips his arm from Jesse’s grip, stumbling sideways. For a heart stopping second he teeters at the lip of the roof, nearly toppling into oblivion, but Jesse seizes him by his wrist and hauls him back to safety.

“Goddamn darlin’,” Jesse hisses as he steadies the both of them. “You’re enough to give a dead man a heart attack, I tell you.”

Hanzo ignores him, too focused on what came before that.

He knows that Jesse is talking about “home” in the abstract. Hanzo doesn’t have a home; not anymore. All the same, it sends chills down his spine, just the very notion that this creature he knows next to nothing about could creep into his territory when he’s defenseless.

(Hanzo is never _truly_ defensive, of course. He has too many years of training beaten into him for that, but Jesse keeps him on his toes at the best of times, and this certainly isn’t that.)

“I’m fine,” Hanzo says, tugging his arm free. He makes a concentrated effort to smooth down the rumples in his clothes. “I can certainly return to my room without your assistance.”

Jesse doesn't look too convinced. He casts a glance to the edge of the roof that Hanzo so nearly toppled from and then looks back at him dubiously. “I ain’t so certain, sweetheart.”

“I thought we had agreed you’d call me by my name,” Hanzo says stiffly.

“Sure thing,” Jesse says, sounding like a man without a single intention of following through. “I’ll call you whatever you want if you let me help you off this roof.”

“I do not need your help,” Hanzo says, and then, because there is no real reason to be cautious of Jesse’s feelings, “and I do not want you knowing where I sleep.”

Jesse snorts. “Hanzo,” he says, “I think you underestimate me something fierce if you think I don’t already know everything there is to know about you.”

Hanzo’s stomach bottoms out, and he opens his mouth to say something although he is not sure what, but Jesse steps forward, pressing a finger to Hanzo’s lips and giving him an amused smile.

“Whatever you’re gonna say, keep in mind sugar; you gave yourself to me. Did you really think that just because I haven’t taken the breath from your lungs yet that I’d let you get out of my sight? You’re an investment, and I’d be a pretty bad investor if I didn’t keep track of you.”

Hanzo stares at him. The finger against his lips is strangely cool, and when he dares to look down he realizes it’s made of metal. Jesse’s whole arm is, he realizes, and it’s not all that surprising he didn’t notice earlier given how tense their meetings have been, but it’s a shock all the same.

_So even demons fall to pieces,_ Hanzo thinks, and it’s a cruel sort of thought but he’s a cruel sort of person.

“If you will not grant me privacy,” Hanzo says at last, “at least grant me dignity. I can return to my room without your assistance, and your offer is an insult.”

Jesse blinks at him. Hanzo cannot tell if he is impressed or just merely amused, but Jesse drops his hand and steps back. “Well,” Jesse says, “when you put it like that, I feel like it’s the least I can give you, I suppose.”

Hanzo’s not even all that drunk anymore. The shocks of the night have driven it to nothing more than an unpleasant buzz and a swaying in his feet, and it’s a pity because he’d like nothing more than to distance himself from the world for the next few hours.

“Thank you,” Hanzo says stiffly, although his pride prickles at it.

“Well, ain’t that a first,” Jesse marvels. “Didn’t know that was a word in your vocabulary, Shimada.”

“There is much you do not know about me,” Hanzo says.

Jesse grins. “I suppose so,” he says. He tips another glance to the edge of the building and says, “How you got up here, for one. I didn’t see no staircase and we’re a good way up.”

Hanzo snorts and gives him a look. “It would be a poor assassin who is stopped by something as simple as inconvenient architecture,” he says, and then turns around, dropping to his knees and gripping the edge of the roof. Without waiting he swings himself up and off. Distantly, he hears Jesse say something but he doesn’t pause to reply, focuses on scaling down the side of the building as quickly as he can, being sure to compensate for the slight shake the alcohol has left in his fingertips.

(Hanzo learnt to account for that by the time he was twenty and spent more nights drinking than not. His father had no problem with his inclination towards the bottle so long as it didn’t affect his shooting.

Hanzo made sure it didn’t.)

His toes touch the ground and Hanzo lets go of the window he’s dangling from, dropping into a crouch. Behind him, somebody wolf whistles, and when Hanzo turns around Jesse claps for him.

“Damn, sweetheart. That was something else.”

He sounds a little jealous and a lot admiring, and Hanzo does not know what to do with that information. Stiffly, he straightens up and brushes the dust off his knees. “It is nothing so admirable, you are merely easily impressed.”

“Well, I ain’t gonna disagree with you on that,” Jesse says amicably.

“What I think is more interesting,” Hanzo says, “is how _you_ got down here, perhaps.”

Jesse’s smile this time is little mischievous and a lot frightening. “Well, that’s a trade secret. But who knows? Maybe you’ll find out yourself someday.”

Hanzo’s skin prickles in a nonexistent breeze. He does not like the sound of that one bit, whatever dark future it is implying. But when he opens his mouth to ask, to push for whatever tidbit of information Jesse might be feeling generous enough to drop, Jesse starts talking again.

“Well, now that I know you’re not gonna fall to a premature death, I suppose I can let you trundle back to wherever it was you come from all on your own,” Jesse says. “But let’s not make a habit of this, yeah? I don’t know how many rooftops I wanna talk you down from.”

Hanzo bristles. “I was not -.”

Jesse’s fingers brush his cheek and Hanzo starts badly but he just gives him another one of his black-eyed smiles and pulls back. “Sleep well, Shimada,” Jesse says. He takes a step away, and before Hanzo can so much as react he is gone. Not so much vanished or faded - just gone.

It is something Hanzo feels like he should be used to by now. It is no less irritating.

“Your farewells are lacking,” he says, and then, “if you come for nothing more than idle chatter again, I will not humour you.”

There is no answer and he stands there a moment longer before he begins to feel foolish talking to the air. He hunches his shoulders, tucks his hands in his pockets, and beings the long walk back to a bed that will do nothing more than grant him nightmares.

Perhaps, he thinks, seeing the dark flash of Jesse’s eyes and the sharps of his teeth, it is not so different from being awake.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thank you so much for all the response to the first part. i wasn't sure how many people would be interested in this idea, and i'm glad to see there's more than a couple. i hope the rest of the fic continues to live up to your expectations! 
> 
> find me on tumblr as glenflower!


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> notes: this chapter does contain a very temporary OC

In a tiny bar that’s far nicer than the bad neighborhood of King’s Row it resides in, Hanzo meets Seamus.

He’s a tall, scrawny men with white teeth and dark eyes. To say Hanzo is charmed is desperately overstating matters. If he had to call it anything, he’d call it _lonely_.

It has been three years now since his life turned upside down, and that’s a long time for even a man like himself to be alone. He’s been jumping from one continent to another with barely time to breathe, and with only the infrequent company of the demon that owns his soul to comfort him.

Hanzo is not, by any stretch of imagination, a social creature, but humans by and large are. Hanzo’s undeniably hungry for any scrap of conversation he can possibly get, and Seamus is a handsome man not too much younger then himself, and Hanzo cannot see the harm in allowing himself just this one simple indulgence.

(he does not deserve it, honestly, but his willpower is only so strong.)

“So,” Seamus says as he passes Hanzo another drink and reclaims his seat beside him, “tell me we what it is you do exactly?”

_I’m a wanderer with more blood on my hands than most people have in their veins._

“I’ve been travelling,” Hanzo deflects smoothly, hand curling around the cool glass of whisky. He gives Seamus a smile that he hopes is friendly but feels far more exhausted.

Seamus either doesn’t notice or does them both the courtesy of pretending not to. It’s nice, Hanzo finds, to finally be in the company of somebody with _manners_. “Whereabouts?”

“Here and there,” Hanzo says, equally as vague. “Wherever works takes me. How about yourself?”

“Much the same,” Seamus says with a smile that transforms his whole face. “I suppose you could say I’m self-employed. I make my own work wherever I am.”

Hanzo feels a cold chill ghost down his spine. The words are innocuous enough, but something about the way Seamus says them sets off alarm bells. Hanzo has been around enough mercenary types in his life to recognize the glint in Seamus’s eye, the cocky slant of his smile.

Hanzo curses at himself for not recognizing it sooner. Half an hour they’ve been here, chatting about unimportant matters, and he’d been so desperate for it to be nothing more than idle friendliness that he hadn’t allowed himself to truly look any closer.

Now that he thinks of it, it makes no sense that Seamus had approached him to begin with. Hanzo knows he’s attractive, he comes from an unfairly advantaged genetic line, but the past few years have left him with a permanent scowl and an aura of annoyance that, far from trying to shake, he’d gone out of his way to cultivate.

If Seamus had just wanted a pleasant conversation there were many other friendlier patrons about. If he’d wanted something _more_ there were plenty of other men who were just as attractive.

Hanzo did not come to this bar to find trouble. He courts enough of that on his own. He has no desire to go out searching for it.

Some of his thoughts must show on his face because Seamus’s smile widens and he leans forward, elbow on the table and chin resting atop his palm. “You needn’t look so worried, Shimada,” he laughs even though Hanzo is absolutely certain he never gave him his name. “It’s a little insulting, honestly.”

Discreetly, Hanzo chances a glance down at his drink. He’d been letting Seamus fetch his drinks all evening. In hindsight, the foolishness of it is enough that he almost wishes the ground would open up and swallow him. The mortification would kill him far before any poison managed.

“Oh, relax,” Seamus says. “I’m not here to hurt you, I promise you there’s nothing in that glass other than some well-aged whisky that will only go to waste if you don’t drink it.”

Hanzo pushes the glass away from neatly. “What do you want?”

Seamus sighs and rolls his eyes. He reaches out, picks up Hanzo’s drink, and knocks it back all at once. “Before you go getting any terrible ideas, I want to assure you that I’m nothing more than a man of opportunity.” He sets the empty glass down and spreads his arms out with a wink. “I don’t even carry a weapon. You can search me, if you like.”

“What,” Hanzo repeats calmly, “do you want?”

Seamus smile dims ever so slightly. “Alright, I guess the small talk is over then. I have a business proposal, and it seems like you might be just the right sort of man for the job.”

Hanzo snorts and gets to his feet, fishing out enough money to more than cover the drinks he’s been letting Seamus buy him all night and placing it atop the bar. “Not interested.”

“No, wait, Shimada,” Seamus says, reaching out to catch Hanzo’s wrist as he turns to leave. He smiles at him again, in that attractive roguish way that had gotten Hanzo to lower his guard to begin with.

(Hanzo has always had a type, and that type is anybody he thinks might meet every challenge he issues head on. It should be unsurprising, he thinks, that the more dangerous he finds somebody, the more inclined he is to take them to bed.)

“Whatever it is,” Hanzo says, “I doubt you can afford me.” He pulls his arm free, but, against his better judgement, does not leave.

“That’s where you’re wrong,” Seamus says. He casts a glance around them and then beckons for Hanzo to lean in. “Don’t you think it’s strange? This bar is stuck in the ass end of a rapidly declining city, and they’ve got enough wealth plastered on these walls to send a bank out of business?”

Hanzo had thought it odd, actually. The financial climate in King’s Row has hardly been ideal in the last few years, but he’d been looking for somewhere to have a drink and he couldn’t have cared less where they got their money so long as they kept serving him without asking any questions.

“What’s your point?”

“I’ve got it on fairly good authority that the owner of this place has her fingers in more than a few pies,” Seamus says. “The kind of pies that most organization would consider unethical and illegal.”

Hanzo gestures impatiently for him to keep talking. It’s not news to him that depravity is on the rise in King’s Row, is on the rise the world over. It’s almost enough, he thinks, to make you miss Overwatch.  

“You’re a real patient sort of guy, aren’t you,” Seamus mutters. “The old hag who runs this place is the paranoid sort, doesn’t trust the establishment.” He raps his knuckles on the bar and sends a meaningful glance to the rug beneath their feet. “I’ve heard on the grapevine that she keeps her not inconsiderable riches beneath this very bar.”

Hanzo cannot hold back a laugh. “Theft? That’s it? All this big talk and you’re nothing more than a petty criminal.”

“Well, that’s just rude,” Seamus says. “Come with me tonight, see what I’m talking about, you can decide if what she’s got down there is _petty_.”

“Not interested,” Hanzo says.

“Alright, fine,” Seamus says easily, voice smooth as silk and segueing shamelessly into his next pitch without a breath. “Think of it this way; you seem like an upstanding bloke, you know, background aside.”

Hanzo raises a brow at him, amused more than insulted.

“Those business investments of hers I mentioned, the unethical sort. Can’t imagine you’re a fan of those, right?”

“You’ll have to do better than that,” Hanzo says.

Seamus holds up a hand patiently, ring on his finger glinting on the dim light. “Patience, Shimada. I’m just saying, it’s the work of an evening to knock all of that down. We take the money, she loses that crown of hers and her slowly building empire comes toppling down. We leave as rich men with the bonus of a bit of moral high ground. Simple, in and out.”

“If it’s so simple, why do you need me?”

Seamus gives a self-deprecating smile. “I’m more brains than brawns,” he says. “I don’t really think anything would go wrong, but I’m certainly not going to be the poor fool who risks it and gets his head blown off by an old woman with a shotgun. You play my bodyguard, we split the profits as even partners. It’s a good deal, better than anybody else around here would offer. Are you really going to turn it down for pride alone?”

Hanzo hesitates. Truth be told, he’s not sure why he’s so adamantly fighting against this. He’s certainly taken harder jobs with far less information. Besides, his wallet is getting awful light lately. If Seamus is telling the truth, this could solve some of his problems very quickly and very easily, without even getting his hands dirty.

Seamus smiles at him and reaches out to place a hand on Hanzo’s wrist. “I’ll be here at three o’clock.”

Hanzo pulls his hand away and steps back. “You’ll be waiting a long time, then.”

Seamus laughs and gets to his feet. He scoops up the money Hanzo had left on the counter and steps in close, tucking it back into his pocket with long, clever fingers. Hanzo stares at him impassively.

“I’ll see you later, Shimada,” Seamus says before stepping away and picking up his coat from the back of the chair. He shrugs it on and disappears out the door without a backwards glance.

.

By the time Hanzo gets back to his room, he’s far more sober than he’d prefer. It’s amazing how quickly tension can burn through the buzz. His head is full to the brim with thoughts and considerations, and his shoulders feel stiff like somebody had seen him trying to shrug his burdens, if only for a night, and made sure to add reinforcements.

He rolls up his sleeves as he comes into the room, shrugging the bag off his shoulder that contains Storm bow and setting it gently in the corner. Sighing, he reaches up to rub at his eyes.

There’s a chuckle behind him and all of his muscles seize up at once, and then Jesse says, “Unlike you to be so careless.”

Hanzo does his best not to look like he’d suffered a mild heart attack, emptying his pockets atop the cupboard without turning around. “Maybe if you’d stop breaking into my room every other week, I wouldn’t be letting my guard down so much.”

“That ain’t what a mean.”

Hanzo casts a small glance to the sky, beseeching a god he doesn’t believe in for patience, and turns around.

Jesse’s sitting on his bed looking as comfortable as if he were the one paying for it, legs crossed and a hand propping up his chin as he considers Hanzo with his unreadable eyes. Just once, Hanzo would like to come into one of their conversations feeling like he had the upper hand. It is not so much to ask.

“Well?” Hanzo says. “Don’t keep me waiting, enlighten me with your observations.”

Jesse doesn’t blink. Hanzo should be used to that by now, but it is still more unnerving than he has the words to explain. “Out at the bar. Seemed like you were letting a pretty face get the best of you.”

Hanzo stares at him blankly for a second before he can rearrange the events of the night in his head well enough to figure out what Jesse means. “You mean _Seamus_?”

“Seamus,” Jesse repeats, but it sounds a hell of a lot more like a sneer. “Seemed like you were actually considering that spiel of his.”

“You were _at the bar_?”

“No,” Jesse says, which answers no questions and raises a dozen. “Might have to be next time, if you’re gonna go around acting like a fool.”

“I was not acting like a _fool_ ,” Hanzo hisses, hackles rising even though he usually has far more control than this. Jesse just gets underneath his skin like nobody else. “It’d do far more harm than good to turn my back on a man like that without listening to what he was so eager to tell me.”

Jesse gets to his feet, and the bed, which is as possibly older than either of them, doesn’t even creak. “I’m not tellin’ you what to do -.”

“Oh, really? How generous.”

“- I’m just saying,” Jesse continues with enough patience that it makes Hanzo twice as mad, “that you oughta stay away.”

“I’ll take you opinion under advisement,” Hanzo says, and then turns around, heading to the tiny en suite the hotel had dared bill as a bathroom. He takes care to slam the door on the way in, and even somebody as pushy and intrusive as Jesse should be able to read that just fine.

He takes a deep breath, gripping the edge of the sink tightly enough that the porcelain creaks pitifully beneath his fingers. He counts to ten, and when the aching fury tearing him apart doesn’t ease, keeps counting.

By the time he hits a hundred he feels like he can step out without taking a swing at the first thing he sets his eyes on. He unfurls his stiff fingers from the sink, wincing slightly, and steps back out to the room.

Jesse is long gone. He hadn’t heard the door even open. That much, at least, Hanzo was used to. When he skates his fingers across the bed, the sheets Jesse had been sitting on are cold.

.

It’s raining when Hanzo leaves the hotel again, and he really shouldn’t have expected anything else. He’s in London after all, and his mood is foul enough that he wouldn’t be surprised if it turned even the nicest weather sour.

Storm bow burns over his shoulder, and Hanzo keeps his eyes open and peeled as he makes his way down the drizzling streets. The few people out at this frankly atrocious time of night are scurrying to cover and barely spare him a glance as he passes. By the time he makes it to the bar the streets are practically deserted.

Seamus is waiting for him, just as he said he would, and he smiles broadly when he sees Hanzo approaching. “You came,” he says, in the voice of a man who had never doubted.

Hanzo’s still on edge from his fight with Jesse, if it could even be termed as much, and he doesn’t have the patience for small talk. “Let’s go,” he says.

Seamus only smiles wider. “Your wish is my command,” he says, and then he turns, ducking around the corner of the building into the alley and Hanzo follows after him.

The backdoor is the work of seconds for Seamus to pick, and Hanzo wishes he wasn’t as impressed with that as he is. Seamus catches the look on his face and winks at him, pulling open the door and gesturing grandly for Hanzo to head in first.

Impressed, maybe, but not foolish.

Hanzo stares at him wordlessly and makes no move to step forward. A half a beat later Seamus sighs, rolling his eyes. “You’re one suspicious man, Shimada,” he says, but ducks forward and through the doorway. Hanzo follows after him cautiously.

The door doesn’t lead directly into the shop surprisingly, but right into a sullen stairwell. Hanzo follows after Seamus as they head down, concerned and uncertain without quite knowing why.

“Down here,” Seamus says, and Hanzo ducks his head and steps out from the stairs and freezes.

He’d thought they’d been heading to a cellar but they’re standing in a warm, dimly lit hallway that looks like it wouldn’t be out of place in one of the modest houses in the nicer parts of the city.

There’s a small collection of doors, and from where he stands he can see the hallway giving way to a kitchen, mismatched chairs pulled up at the breakfast bar and photos lovingly hung on all the walls.

Slowly, he turns to look at Seamus only to see him creeping towards one of the doors. Hanzo’s hand shoots out to catch his wrist, hauling him to a stop.

“Where are we?” Hanzo hisses.

Seamus rolls his eyes and pulls his hand free. “She lives down here,” he say.

“Who?”

“The bitch who runs the place,” Seamus says patiently. “Turned the whole cellar into a quaint little apartment.”

Hanzo feels like he’s stepped into a parallel world. Nothing is making sense. “You said she kept the money down here, you didn’t say she _lived here_.”

Seamus shrugs his shoulders. “You didn’t ask.”

Hanzo didn’t ask because it hadn’t crossed his damn mind. And he’d never have agreed to this if he’d known. Treasure hunting in the basement of a bar was a lot different from breaking into somebody’s house to pillage and burn.

Seamus is creeping towards one of the doors again, and as he crouches down, lock picks sliding out of his sleeve, Hanzo sees a glimmer of a gun tucked into his waistband.

Instantly, everything changes. He goes cold right down to his toes, and he’s grabbed Seamus, hauling him away and slamming him into a wall before he can even think about it. Seamus’s hands fist in his shirt and he winces as his head bangs into a framed portrait of smiling grandchildren.

“What the fuck is your _problem_ , Shimada?” He snaps.

“Keep your voice down,” Hanzo hisses.

Seamus rolls his eyes, clutching his fingers hard enough that his nails scrap at Hanzo’s skin. “She’s fucking _deaf_ , she can’t hear jackshit.”

Hanzo ignores him and asks through clenched teeth, “Why do you have a gun? You told me you didn’t even carry a weapon.”

Something glints in Seamus’s eyes and he pushes Hanzo back roughly, straightening up his shirt in a transparent bid to buy time. “Listen,” he says, voice oil slick, “I’ve been thinking; seems kind of counterproductive just to leave her alive, doesn’t it? No telling who she’s going to tell, connections like that. Better for all involved if we don’t leave any witnesses behind.”

“That is not what you told me at the bar,” Hanzo says carefully.

Seamus sighs. Like this, in the dim hallway, the angles in his face seem sharper and less pleasant; something you might cut yourself on if you looked for too long. It’s hard to remember why Hanzo ever thought him attractive. “You’re not seeing the big picture,” Seamus says. “Sure, the old bat croaks it, but with the money we could be goddamn _kings_ , Shimada.”

Hanzo had been born to kinghood, had known he’d rule his clan and all of Hanamura even before he knew how to walk. It is not, he knows, a thing that comes lightly. He could not handle it then, and he will not handle it now.

All that aside, he’s not going to be complicit in the murder of an old woman on the word of somebody like Seamus alone. So far tonight, he’s proven that Hanzo cannot trust him as far as he can throw him. He’s lied about everything he could get away with and then some.

Hanzo is not even certain anymore what Seamus’s definition of ‘unethical business' is. Hanzo grew up the heir to one of the most feared organized crime empires in the world; a man raised in a glass house has no room to be throwing stones.

“No,” he says.

Seamus turns around and his eyes practically bulge. “ _No_?”

“No,” Hanzo says again. He folds his arms, lifts his chin, and stares him down. “I will have no part in this.”

Seamus laughs, and it’s a reedy, unpleasant thing. “Shimada, last I checked you’re an assassin. Seems like you picked a hell of a time to grow a moral compass over just a little murder.”

Hanzo takes a deep breath and lets it out slowly. His bow feels like fire on his back and never has he wished to draw it so much over a petty argument. “I am not an assassin,” he says as calmly as he can manage. “I serve nobody but myself, kill nobody I do not want to, and there is no such thing as a _little_ murder. It is not a crime that comes in increments. I am fully aware I have more blood on my hands than will ever be washed away. But if _you_ do not see that, you’re not just mad; you’re a sociopath.”

The look on Seamus’s face is ugly. His mouth is a thin, white line and his eyes are narrow. “Who are you to judge me? I kill an old lady who’s probably going to kick the bucket before the year is out, so what?” He pauses, and the smile he gives makes Hanzo’s stomach drop. “At least I didn’t kill my own _brother_.”

There is a second there where the world goes white. There is a ringing in Hanzo’s ears, louder even than the heartbeat that is slowly cracking his ribs from the inside out. “What?”

Seamus laughs again, takes a step forward even as Hanzo unconsciously takes a step back. He hits the wall and hears a picture frame drop and smash against the floor beside him. He experiences a moment of panic that he’s woken the old woman asleep just a handful of feet away before he remembers she can’t hear any of this.

“You think I didn’t know? I might not be the heir to an empire like you are - sorry, _were_ \- but I’m not stupid, Shimada. Anybody worth their salt in this business knows who you are and what you did.”

“Be quiet,” Hanzo says, and there’s a fury building inside of him like a hurricane, but its winds are not louder than Genji’s death rattle which is echoing in his skull.

“Did he cry when you cut him down? Beg you to stop? _Why brother, why?_ ”

“ _Shut up_ ,” Hanzo snarls and he moves forward at the exact same time Seamus draws his gun. There’s no time to react, nothing more than a split second where Hanzo realizes what is about to happen. He may be fast, but he is not faster than a bullet.

The crack of the shot is achingly loud, and for a second there is nothing but numbness and Hanzo thinks _oh, he’s missed_ \- and then his knee explodes.

Hanzo shouts, does not have the strength _not to_ , and goes down like a ton of bricks, scrambling against the wall before he sinks to the floor on a leg that refuses to hold him anymore. He clutches at the shattered remains of his kneecap with both hands like he can keep it together with pressure and faith alone. He can feel the blood, hot and furious, pouring out between the gaps in his fingers.

Seamus is laughing again, but this time it sounds half hysterical, and when Hanzo looks up he’s staring at him with wide eyes and a pale face. It is possible, he thinks, that Seamus hadn’t truly realized what he was doing until after he pulled the trigger.

That’s why Hanzo has always loved his bow. Between nocking the arrow, drawing, and firing, there is no room for mistake. Every person he takes down is a deliberate choice, not a thoughtless reaction.

Seamus stares down at him, gun raised. “This isn’t exactly how I wanted this to play out,” he says, but he cocks his gun and takes aim right between Hanzo’s eyes without so much as blinking.

It’s silent for a second, and Hanzo is in more pain than he can ever remember being in, but he can’t look away, can’t bring himself to try reaching for his bow or the knife strapped to his ankle. He just stares down the barrel of the gun and thinks _there are worse ways to go_.

Hanzo doesn’t even see Jesse arrive. One moment Hanzo is waiting to die, and the next there’s a sharp crack in the air. Seamus has such a look of surprise on his face that Hanzo doesn’t even realize what’s happening until a small trickle of blood dribbles down from the corner of his mouth.

He can see the blood splatter now, on the ceiling and the walls, and it’s not the first time he’s seen something like this, but it is not an experience that improves upon repetition.

Seamus doesn’t make a sound as he falls face first to the ground. He’s dead before he hits it. Jesse’s standing behind where he’d been only a moment ago, and Hanzo is staring down the barrel of Jesse’s revolver, red at the tip where it’d been pressed against Seamus’s head.

The looks on Jesse’s face is indescribable. His eyes are pitch black and there’s a nothingness in his expression that Hanzo cannot even begin to describe. His hand is steady and there’s a faint flick of blood on his chin. He wipes it away with the heel of his palm carelessly, like it hadn’t only moments ago belonged in the body of a breathing man.

Hanzo cannot breathe. He cannot move. His shoulders are burning from holding himself upright and he cannot feel his leg.

Jesse’s face is _terrifying_.

Slowly, Jesse’s eyes flicker down to look at Hanzo. For a second Hanzo is sure that Jesse is going to shoot him too; that he’d missed his final notice and Jesse was coming to collect what had been his for a very long time.

Hanzo takes in a deep breath that is loud and ragged and just like that the moment shatters.

Jesse holsters his gun and takes a few steps forward, crouching down to look at what was once Hanzo’s knee. He lets out a low whistle, tilting his hat out of his face. “Well, ain’t you just one big mess, partner.”

Hanzo’s mouth is dry and when he speaks his voice is hoarse. “A bullet straight through bone will do that.”

Jesse grins at him, eyes crinkling in the corner, and when he reaches out to prod at him Hanzo knows Jesse will think the flinch is from the pain and not something else entirely. “You sure are lucky to have me about,” Jesse says. “If this is how your knee came out, I’d sure hate to see what a bullet would do to that beautiful face of yours.”

Hanzo is so tense that Jesse’s flirting rubs him wrong in a way it never has before. “Yes, it’d sure be a shame if somebody killed me and robbed you of the honour.”

Jesse laughs. “Shoot sugar, you ain’t as smart as I thought if you think your untimely death voids our deal.”

Hanzo doesn’t know what that means and doesn’t even get a chance to think about it because next thing he knows Jesse is hauling him to his feet. Hanzo has to slam his teeth together to keep himself from screaming bloody murder. He’s damn near hyperventilating, shaking from the effort of staying upright.

Jesse laughs again, shrugs Hanzo’s arm over his shoulder even as Hanzo blacks out for a solid second. “You’re one tough son of a bitch, Shimada,” Jesse says as he drags Hanzo across the room towards the door. “You’re gonna make me swoon.”

Hanzo’s consciousness is faint at best. He cannot stop seeing the look on Jesse’s face as Seamus fell away and left him standing there, tall and menacing. For the first time in as long as Hanzo’s known him, he’d looked at him and though _ah, so_ this _is a demon_.

Jesse jostles him and Hanzo darts back to awareness with a pained cry. “Stay with me, you hear? Be a real shame to lose you to something as embarrassing as this.”

Hanzo curses at him in as many languages as his scrambled mind can reach. Jesse doesn’t seem bothered, just nods obligingly as he hauls him towards the stairwell. Hanzo takes one look at all the stairs Jesse expects him to climb and leans forward to throw up.

Jesse sighs, like Hanzo’s nothing more than a mild inconvenience. “Nice.”

“Fuck you,” Hanzo spits. His mouth tastes like blood and bile. The world wavers black again.

“You’re not making this easy,” Jesse says. “But if that’s the way it’s gotta be.”

“If that’s the way what’s -.”

There’s a sharp pain at the base of his skull and Hanzo has a moment to incredulously realize that Jesse has just slammed his head into the wall. For a second there is a soft voice by his ear, words he cannot recognize, and a hand in his hair.

Before Hanzo can try and think about that, the world goes reassuringly black.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i know this chapter is much longer that the previous ones, but there's really no place to break it without ruining tension. i hope ya'll don't mind. thank you, as always, for the stunning feedback which gives me the energy to keep forging forward on this thing even when it doesn't want to be written. as always, find me on tumblr as glenflower.


	4. Chapter 4

Hanzo wakes in a tiny bed in a tiny shack. The pain is bearable if not pleasant, and he doesn’t feel the uncomfortable swoop in his stomach that tells him he’s recently been drugged. It is a feeling he has more experience with than he might care to admit, and the absence of it is as gratifying as it is baffling.

“Good,” says a voice he does not recognize and Hanzo freezes with one hand bunched in the blankets and the other rising to rub at his sore head. “I was worried Jesse had been a little… enthusiastic in his desire to help.”

There’s the noise of glass clattering and a woman steps into view. She’s pretty; blonde-haired and blue-eyed. She looks tired though, and less than pleased to see him which is rich considering Hanzo definitely did not tuck himself into this bed.

“You know Jesse?” Hanzo rasps, awkwardly struggling to sit up against the too-fluffy pillows behind him. He’s infinitely grateful that the woman doesn’t try and help.

“Yes, I know Jesse,” she says. She hands him a glass of something fizzy. “My name is Angela, if you care to know.”

“I do not,” Hanzo says, taking the glass and squinting at it suspiciously. “Where am I? And what is this?”

“Geneva, and just drink it,” Angela says.

Hanzo frowns, rubbing his palms along the icy glass. Last he’d been aware, he was in England. “What day is it?”

“You’ve been here for about six hour, give or take, and Jesse promises me he dropped you off only moments after your ‘accident’.” She leans forward to press her palm against Hanzo’s forehead. He flinches back instinctively, nearly spilling the drink, but Angela just clucks at him. “Calm down. I’m a doctor, not an axe murderer. Drink your medicine.”

Hanzo scowls but forces himself to be still. The medicine tastes faintly like strawberries and he begrudgingly sips it as Angela hums and mutters to herself. Eventually she pulls back. “Your temperature seems fine,” Angela says. “You can leave tomorrow if you want.”

“What did you do to my knee?”

Angela smiles thinly. “Nanotechnology. Jesse got you to me quick enough that I managed to set it mostly right. You might get some pain sometimes, and I certainly wouldn’t recommend shattering it again, but it’s all back in one piece.”

“If my knee is fixed, why can I not leave right now?”

“Because Jesse might very well kill me if I let you waltz out my door within hours of repairing a compound fracture,” Angela says bluntly. “I would much rather deal with you than tell that _thing_ you’re gone should he come and check back.”

“You know what he is,” Hanzo observes.

Angela sighs. She sinks down on the edge of the bed. Hanzo stiffens, but the desire to know more about Jesse vastly outweighs his discomfort with strangers. Angela folds her hands in her lap and studies Hanzo carefully. “I have known Jesse for some time by now and this is the first time he’s shown up at my doorstep with a deal maker in his arms. It was … a surprise, to say the least.”

“I do not know what you’re implying,” Hanzo says carefully, “but you should know that the bruise on the back of my head is his doing before you go making assumptions.”

“Yes,” Angela agrees. “He did tell me about that. Although, from the sounds of it, it was a mercy to you at that point.”

Hanzo remembers the searing pain, a fire lodged deep in his bones. He remembers seeing the stairs, realizing just how far away help was, and thinking that he might very well cry for the first time in all his adult life. He remembers the faint feeling of a hand smoothing over his forehead as the darkness took him.

But he also remembers Seamus; he remembers the awful blankness on Jesse’s face, the charcoal of his eyes. The way that he’d looked right through Hanzo with the barrel of his gun dripping blood on the floor; like Hanzo was nothing more than a very small bug and Jesse was considering whether he ought to step on him or not.

He suddenly feels cold all over. There’s ice in his veins even as there’s sweat on his forehead. He cannot entirely suppress a shiver and he knows Angela sees it. There’s a warmth of understanding in her eyes, and no small amount of pity.

Hanzo hates it.

“I do not pretend to know the way Jesse’s mind works,” Hanzo says. “As he is fond to remind me, I am _his_. He strikes me as a man who does not take well to others touching his belongings.”

Angela’s eyes crinkle at the corner and she does not smile. “I don’t think our kind is meant to understand his,” she says, and Hanzo cannot help but think there’s no greater truth.

She gets to her feet then, smoothing out the crinkles in her skirt. “Get some rest,” she says. “It seems like you could use it.”

.

Hanzo does not consciously allow things to change after that night, but they do.

He dreams more. Hideous things. Sharp teeth in a sharper smile and eyes like black holes. He dreams of the barrel of a gun dripping blood to the floor. He summoned Jesse, has known what he was from the very first time he saw him smile, and yet it’s only now that he’s realizing just how deep the hole he dug himself is.

It is not that he killed Seamus that bothers him, because Hanzo wouldn’t have let the man live much longer himself. It is the way he did it, the careless, awful look on his face. It was his complete inhumanity in that moment.

It is that he looked less like a man than he did a figure of myth and legend. Somebody steeped in blood and raised on fury, and Hanzo is just now coming to the realization that he’s set himself in Jesse’s path without a single escape.

He can live with having sold his soul; he is not so sure he can live with the certainty that at any moment Jesse might turn those cold, terrifying eyes on _him_ and there is not a thing Hanzo will be able to do but hold on tight and hope that his death is quick.

The first time Jesse visits him after the incident, Hanzo is alone in his hotel room chin on his palm and staring fixedly at the floor. He doesn’t even realize Jesse’s there until he drops a hand on his shoulder and makes him jump.

“Shit, darlin’,” Jesse drawls, tilting his hat out of his face and grinning. “Didn’t mean to startle you.”

Hanzo stares at him, heart as heavy in his throat as Jesse’s hand is on his shoulder. He still has the same tousled hair, the too-sharp teeth, the warm brown skin. He’s still got the ridiculous cowboy hat, the serape, the boots with the spurs. He looks exactly the same as the last time Hanzo saw him and nothing at alike all at once.

Hanzo cannot burn that vicious blankness out of his head, sees the blood on Jesse’s cheek and the dark of his eyes.

Something must show on his face because the giddy brightness Jesse exudes drops and his face falls into a considering frown. “You’re looking a little pale there, sweetheart. Did I pick a bad time?”

Hanzo takes a deep breath and pushes away the hand on his shoulder. “I am just tired,” he says. It is not, necessarily speaking, a lie either. “And anytime I see you is a bad time.”

Jesse chuckles at that, tucking his hands in his pockets as he kicks out the chair across from Hanzo and sinks into it. The table the hotel room provided him is a tiny thing not built for two men of their size and their knees knock underneath. The casualness of it, the mundane way Jesse slouches back in his chair and kicks his boots against Hanzo’s, is enough to give him shivers all over again.

“Glad to see you’re in one piece,” Jesse observes, leaning back so far that the chair creaks alarmingly. His eyes flicker over Hanzo quickly and efficiently and he seems satisfied with what greets him. “Was fairly certain Ange wasn’t gonna kill you to spite me, but she’s a banshee of a woman when she wants to be.”

Hanzo frowns for a second before it clicks. “Ah,” he says. “You mean Angela?”

Jesse grins and lets the legs of his chair _thump_ back to solid ground. “My very own little miracle worker,” he says cheerfully.

Hanzo’s stomach turns. “Is she…?”

Jesse’s grin widens. “She’s one of mine, if that’s what you’re asking. But something tells me you already knew that.” He leans forward and taps the side of his nose as he winks. “I bet you two had all kinds of interesting gossip to share.”

Hanzo tries to fix him with a cool look but he’s too off kilter, too shaken down to his very bones. He’s always had a healthy respect for Jesse, doesn’t know why today should affect him anymore than the dozens of other times he’s seen him, but it is. “I don’t think either of us are much for gossip,” he says. “And you flatter yourself if you think I’m that interested in you.”

Jesse laughs. “Oh, sugar, you’re as bad a liar as you are a mercenary.”

Hanzo bristles. “I am not a bad mercenary. One might even go so far as to say this is a line of work I was born for.”

The look Jesse gives him is both smug and pitying. “Hanzo, a man who sold his own soul to save the brother he murdered is never going to be the kind of man suited for a career of taking innocent lives for profit.”

“That’s not…” Hanzo trails off, frustrated and furious. “Genji has nothing to do with this.”

“It seems to me,” Jesse drawls, “that Genji seems to have something to do with _everything_ when it comes to you.”

That shuts Hanzo up fast. He wants to refute it desperately, but he’s on year three of a self-imposed exile, has given up his birthright, his family, and his honour. He seeks redemption with a fierceness that is comparable to the dragons in his clan tales and knows deep down that whatever good was inside of him died when he looked down to see Genji’s blood on his hands.

Hanzo is not stupid. He knows that the life he lives is dictated almost entirely by the consequences of that night. It does not make it any more pleasant to be reminded of.

“I don’t want to talk about this,” Hanzo says abruptly, pushing back his chair with a squeal. “I am tired, and if you are just here to -.”

“Hey, hey,” Jesse says, reaching out and grabbing Hanzo’s wrists. It’s a gesture meant to calm and steady, but the second his fingers lock around his skin Hanzo tries viciously to wrench away. Jesse’s fingers do not budge an inch; they’re so cold and immobile they might as well be shackles and there’s a panic at the back of Hanzo’s throat, stoking itself higher and higher until he’s choking on the horrible, smoky fear.

“Let me go,” he snarls, yanking hard enough that he nearly tears his shoulder from its socket. “Damn you, demon - _let me go_.”

_This is so easy for him_ , he thinks, almost deliriously, _I could stand here for ten thousand years and never move him an inch._

“Woah, hey now,” Jesse says, surprised, releasing Hanzo’s wrists quickly and holding his palms up. “I ain’t mean to frighten you, calm down. I’ve hardly gone through all this effort keeping you alive just to break you now.”

There are bruises already forming around Hanzo’s wrists, he can feel them, and it’s more a sign of his frantic struggle than it is Jesse’s malevolence but it stirs the fear inside him all the same. He sees Jesse in the cellar with the gun, hears the soft _thud_ of Seamus hitting the floor, smells the blood in the air.

Hanzo takes a deep, unsteady breath and tries to ground himself. When he looks up again Jesse is watching him with a bemused stare, one hand on his hip and the other scratching through his hair.

“Do not,” Hanzo repeats, “touch me.”

“Alright,” Jesse says, slow and careful. “Alright, I’ll keep my hands to myself, if it’s gonna send you into a tizzy like that.”

“And do not talk to me like I’m a child,” Hanzo hisses.

“Okay,” Jesse says again, deliberately over-emphasizing. “Alright, whatever you need, Hanzo.”

His understanding borders on mockery and Hanzo has had enough. He will not stand here and be talked down to by a demon who has been stringing him along for years now, making a game out of keeping Hanzo on his toes, keeping him guessing, waiting, always ready to die.

“That is enough,” Hanzo says. “You are not welcome here. Either take what you are owed or leave me be. I refuse to play your games.”

Jesse stares at him, startled, and then his face shutters closed. There’s nothing readable behind that mask, and Hanzo does not allow himself to look too closely.

“I don’t know what’s got a bee in your bonnet,” Jesse says, “but if it means so much to you, sure, I’ve got other places I can be.”

Hanzo tightens his jaw and stares him down, doesn’t say a word. The silence between them stretches tight enough to snap, and then Jesse chuckles. It does not sound amused, and the smile he gives Hanzo as he tips his hat out of his face shows the sharps of his teeth. “Alright,” he says. “See you around, sweetheart. Or not.”

Hanzo doesn’t get a chance to say anything, not that he’d planned to. There’s a breeze from nowhere that makes Hanzo flinch, and when he opens his eyes again he’s alone. The only proof that Jesse had even been there is the crooked chair at the table and the bruises on his wrist.

For a moment Hanzo just stands there, one hand bracing himself upright on the back of the chair. He can hear the thunder of his heart, feel the cool sweat prickling at his spine.

And he has the strangest feeling he might have just made the second biggest mistake of his life.

.

Life continues. Jesse does not visit him, and although Hanzo wishes that meant he slept whole nights through now, he just winds up more paranoid. It feels like there’s eyes on his back constantly. He checks every corner before he turns it and his hand is never too far from his bow.

Even he can’t say where this unrelenting fear was born from. Jesse has given him no reason to think he’s anything but a man - in the loosest definition of _man_ \- of his word. But Hanzo cannot move past that night in the cellar apartment, the callous emptiness in him.

Jesse’s a demon. _A demon_. And he has exclusive rights to Hanzo’s soul.

It starts small. His eyes linger on dark bookshops and occult storefronts. He passes a fortune teller in a marketplace in Berlin and almost without his permission his steps slow to a halt. She looks up and crooks him a smile made of mostly missing teeth. “Do you see anything you like, young man?”

“Just browsing,” Hanzo says in clumsy German and books it back to the hotel at double pace. He can hear the phantom sound of spurs behind him, and he knows all things considered it’s in his head, but he can’t shake the sense he’s being followed.

In Prague he visits a library that has survived three world ending wars. He drifts into the supernatural section without any conscious thought on his part, running the tips of his fingers along shelves rich with creaky books and tomes that look as old as Hanzo feels most days.

He spots a title in clear scripted gold that sticks out to him like a sore thumb. The title is German, but beneath it is cramped English that read: _A Compendium of Summonings, Bannishings, and Demonic Lore_. He plucks it from the shelf before he can even think about what he’s doing.

His written German is even rustier than his spoken German, but the graphic illustrations alongside the text more than do it justice. He cannot even begin to describe what seems to be happening in some of the pictures except that it looks viciously painful for all involved.

It only registers just what he’s doing when, for a split second, it’s Jesse’s face he sees superimposed on the awful visage of a screaming demon.

He feels cold from his ears to his toes and he shoves the book back onto the shelf, uncaring of its delicate pages and weak spine. This earns him a nasty look from a passing librarian, but Hanzo barely notices her past the beginnings of Genji screaming in his head, the jingle of Jesse’s spurs at his back.

Hanzo is scared of Jesse. _Terrified_ of him. That much has never been a secret. Jesse holds Hanzo’s life - holds _Genji’s_ life - in the palm of his hand. It’d be a foolish man not to feel the weight of that.

But perhaps Hanzo had grown complacent in that knowledge. Had let Jesse’s inhumanity be drowned out by his stupid hat and his ever effervescent grin.

Hanzo is not a good man. He cannot possibly _be_ a good man when has so much blood on his hands that he feel sodden with it some days. Jesse though; he’s another beast entirely. And Hanzo is no longer certain that he can afford to have him looking over his shoulder.

Slowly, he reaches up and drags the book back off the shelf again. When the librarian is not looking, he tucks it under his coat and disappears out the front door.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> we're nearing the end of the scenes i've had pre-written, but we're absolutely nowhere near the end of the fic. updates might be slightly slower going forward, but i'm enjoying this universe a lot, and have plans for others fics (including an r76 fic, and a sequel to this.) I hope ya'll are enjoying this, given it's a fairly niche (?) trope and i'm excited to see that some of ya'll are still reading. 
> 
> as always, i'm glenflower on tumblr!


	5. Chapter 5

It takes longer than Hanzo had anticipated to find somebody he trusts enough to translate the book. This is not, of course, because there are no German speakers to be found in Prague of all places, but because Hanzo is not entirely keen on being committed to a psych ward when they see the translations he’s asking for.

He finds Jemimah behind the counter of an occult shop that looks like it hasn’t been cleaned in longer than she’d been alive. She’s tiny, blue-haired, and with a permanent expression of intense apathy. Hanzo feels inexplicably drawn to her for that last part alone.

When Hanzo hands her the book, face carefully blank, she looks at it and scoffs. “Should have known you would be one of those nutjob types,” she says. “Who else goes around with a bow strapped to their back looking like they’re either on their way to or from a crime scene?”

“So you won’t translate it?”

“I didn’t say that, now did I? Give me two days and three grand and you’ve got yourself a deal.”

Hanzo feels like he’s being ripped off, but he doesn’t know the going rate for linguistic translation these days. Besides, he knows as well as any that extra digits are more likely to buy silence. He hands the cash over without a word, and she takes it with an ease that tells him it’s not her first time handling large sums of money. It’s sad how he finds that more reassuring than anything else.

“Go,” Jemimah says, without looking up from her counting.

Hanzo goes, and three days later he comes back. The door is locked when he tries it, but there’s a light on in the shop so he doesn't think she’s cut and run. He scales the wall easily and slips through the window. He lands on his feet by the front desk.

“Oh, good,” Jemimah says without looking up from whatever she’s tapping at on the computer screen. “You showed up.”

“You could have left the door unlocked,” Hanzo says, straightening up.

Jemimah scoffs. “I get a very specific clientele here; the door locks at eleven, no exceptions, not even for you, pretty boy.”

Hanzo hasn’t been called “pretty boy” since he was at least half the age he is now. He’s strangely flattered and offended at the same time.

“Here’s your dumb demon shit,” Jemimah says, bending down and momentarily disappearing behind the desk. When she re-emerges it’s with a stack of papers so thick that Hanzo is daunted. She all but throws it at him too, and he has to scramble to keep the pages in order.

He thumbs through them. Several words leap out him, none of them particularly nice. “And you’re sure this is all correct?”

“Do you have a degree in three different languages? Yes, I’m sure it’s accurate.”

“You’re certain?”

Jemimah slams her hands down on the counter. Hanzo looks up, raising a brow. She leans so far forward that Hanzo can’t help but imagine her feet dangling above the ground.

“Listen here, you giant dickbag,” she says. “If you don’t trust my translation services, you’re welcome to try your luck with somebody else.”

Hanzo stuffs the papers under his arm. “That won’t be necessary. Thank you for your help and, I’m sure it goes without saying, your discretion.”

Jemimah snorts and finally leans away. “Do I look dumb enough to go gossiping about you mercenary types behind your back? Your weird demon kink is safe with me, pretty boy.”

Hanzo is still not sure he likes that nickname. He likes even less her referring to his demonic research as a ‘kink’. He’s not about to start a fight about it though, partly because he’s not sure he’d win, and partly because he’s itching to get back to his hotel room and read through what she’s given him.

“Thank you,” he says again, in lieu of a proper goodbye, and turns to disappear out the window again.

(Climbing a wall with a book worth of paper wedged in your armpit is difficult but not impossible, and Hanzo really cannot stomach the idea of asking her to let him out the door. He has his pride, after all.)

.

The summoning isn’t the problem. Hanzo has known how to summon a demon for years now. The problem is trapping Jesse once he arrives; the problem is what he does after _that_.

It turns out to be both easier and more complicated than he would have thought.

The book calls for the basic ritualistic elements of the arcane; candles, a complicated looking rune drawn on sturdy ground. It also calls for a flawless intonation of something that looks vaguely Latin, although it doesn't specify as much. It warns too, that to misspeak the intonation will put the speaker in mortal peril.

Hanzo lives with mortal peril every day. It’s practically his day job. If that’s all the book has to caution him about, then he’s really not all that worried.

The blessed arrow is a little trickier. Even if Hanzo were a man of faith, he wouldn’t trust his life on the strength of his conviction. Men who kill their own brothers are not afforded the grace of any god, no matter how often they take to their knees to beg forgiveness.

Eventually, he finds his way to an out of the way monastery that is used to men like him crossing their threshold, and understands that not all of the horrors of the universe are contained to the realm of fiction.

The priest who blesses his arrows for him is young, almost as young as Hanzo, and when he presses them back into his hands he says, “A blessing is only as good as the intentions of the man who wields it.”

Hanzo does not have a clue what that means. “Thank you,” he says, and he leaves as quickly as he can, because these days places of worship make him more uncomfortable than he has the words to explain.

He’s got demon taint in his blood, and his skin feels stained in all the places blood has touched him. He’s sodden with sin, and he does his level best not to drip it where it’s not welcome.

With his arrows sorted, it’s the work of a week to cautiously gather together all the elements he needs for this to be successful, watching over his shoulder all the while. Jesse does not reappear. Hanzo has certainly gone longer without a visit, but not in recent memory. If Jesse is trying to show how offended he is, then he has more than made a point about it.

Finally, after the longest few days of his life, Hanzo finds a crossroads in a lonely, out of the way place.

It’s dark, well past midnight, and Hanzo takes his time setting up. He copies the demon’s trap from the book, drawing it on the rocky ground with spray paint, reciting the incarnation in a dull drone as he goes, heart beating in his throat the whole time.

He doesn’t mess it up. He’s relieved but also smug. Hanzo speaks several languages near fluently, and has long perfect the art of memorization. Comparatively, this is child’s play.

The candles are cheap and scentless, and he plants them evenly along the points of the circle where the lines come to the edge. He feels faintly ridiculous, but the book had assured him it was necessary, and this isn’t the kind of thing Hanzo is going to take risks on out of stubborn pride alone.

He steps back and surveys his handiwork. It doesn’t look very frightful, but he hadn’t expected it to. The paint he’d used is bright orange and the candles are a waxy blue, but he’d been less concerned with aesthetics than time management.

It shouldn't give him the chills. Somehow it still does.

Hanzo blows out a breath and steps into the trap. The centre of the circle sits right atop the middle of the crossroads, and is empty of any of the crisscrossing lines that make up the trap. Hanzo assumes that’s an intentional design choice, and he kneels, digging out a hole in the soft dirt.

There are memories clawing at him, knocking about in the back of his head. Last time he did this it was in the snow, and there was blood caught beneath his nails. It’s been years, but in this moment it feels like only a fraction of that, like he might turn around and find his brother dead and waiting behind him.

_You saved Genji_ , he reminds himself. _You saved Genji and now you’re going to save yourself_.

He buries the box, patting out the dirt evenly and getting to his feet. Against all odds, his hands are not shaking.

Outside of the circle, he lights the candles one at a time. The last one flares unnaturally for a second, flame quivering in some imagined breeze. Hanzo shakes the match out, steps away from the circle.

He does not allow himself to second guess. He’s gotten too far, is in far too deep, and all he has to do is close his eyes for a second and he sees Jesse and the dark oblivion of his expression, the blood on the end of his gun.

Hanzo grits his teeth, picks up his bow, and waits.

He’s old and he’s tired, and he refuses to live in fear when he can act.

For a long moment nothing happens. It’s just him and the cool, night air, the silent burning of the candles. He’s patient though, remembers very clearly how much Jesse made him wait that first time. Over the years Hanzo has learnt that he has an unparalleled flare for the dramatic.

Eventually, his patience is rewarded. There’s a whisper of something in the air, unnatural and unknowable. The light dips, just slightly, and then the candles hiss, sputter, and go out as one.

Hanzo nocks his arrow and draws the bow.

He smells smoke and brimstone; burning flesh, and salt.

The candles flare back to life.

“Well,” Jesse says, voice honey smooth. “This sure is one hell of a reception, sweetheart. Been a long time since I’ve seen your pretty face, and this is what I get?”

He’s standing in the trap, hands on his hips and considering Hanzo with an expression that reads ever so slightly disappointed, like he’d expected _better_ of him. Beyond that though, he looks amused, which just angers Hanzo more.

“You seem surprised,” Hanzo says.

Jesse snorts. He takes a step forward, and then another, but stops at the very edge of the circle. He looks down at it, considering, then scuffs his boot on the dirt and looks up with a grin. “Well, I gotta say, I didn’t think you’d have the balls for it, honestly. It’s good work though. Wherever you got your information is all kinds of dangerous.”

Hanzo doesn’t know whether he should be offended or not. He keeps his draw steady and his eyes locked on Jesse’s. “Thank you.”

Jesse’s smile widens. “There’s just one thing, sweetheart. Just one little thing.”

Hanzo feels a chill race down his spine. The air feels thick and heavy. He can feel a kernel of panic now, slowly budding in his gut.

Jesse reaches out and when his fingers encounter the barrier Hanzo had set up they set off a furious blue spark.

“Stop that,” Hanzo barks. He tries to raise his bow, hadn’t even noticed he’d lowered it, but it’s like moving through syrup. He hadn’t noticed that either, when the air around him went from crackling to sluggish and slow.

Jesse grins. “Excellent trap, Hanzo, but it was made to contain a very specific kinda demon and I hate to break it to you - but I ain’t it.”

It’s like time slows down, and Hanzo is helpless to do anything but watch. Jesse steps forward, the toe of his boot edging over the circle, and whatever mystical force Hanzo had woven to keep him in place crackles loudly, sparking uselessly. He can _feel_ it as the barrier gives out, smell an electric tang in the air.

Jesse steps forward, smudging the paint on the ground, and he’s out of the trap in a heartbeat.

Hanzo cannot move. He’s frozen in place by a sense of dread so awful and deep that he knows it’s not merely in his head. His bow slips from his lax fingers, tumbling to the ground.

_This is it_ , he thinks, and it’s more hollow than despairing. _This is really it this time._

Jesse lets out a low whistle, adjusts his hat, and looks up at Hanzo with a grin. His eyes are coal black, and his smile has more teeth than Hanzo is reasonably sure the human jaw can contain.

“Now, sweetheart,” Jesse says. “I think it’s time we had a talk, don’t you?”

“I have nothing to say to you,” Hanzo says stiffly. “Make this swift, if you would be so kind.”

Jesse grimaces, all the worn lines of his face folding in amongst themselves. “My god, but you’re a stubborn bastard,” he marvels. “You must have been a right terror growing up. And they call _me_ a demon.”

Hanzo does not know what to make of any of that. He can see Stormbow from the corner of his eye, half an inch from his boots. If he could just shake whatever magic Jesse is working to turn the air to quicksand around him, it would take all of seconds to reach it. An inch, a second - those measurements have never felt so inestimably enormous before.

Hanzo takes in a breath. His heart is a storm in his chest, and he’s sure that Jesse must be able to hear the thunder of it he stands so close.

He will get one chance at this, no more. If he wins, he is free. If he fails…

Hanzo grits his teeth, buries away whatever shreds of pride remain, and looks Jesse in the eye. He summons up all his charm, his charisma, puts his pretty face to work, and relies on the curious interest and occasional goodwill of a demon.

“ _Jesse_ ,” he says, and his voice is feather soft and welcoming.

The look of stunned surprise on Jesse’s face would be hilarious in any other circumstances but the ones Hanzo finds himself in. The shock of his name off Hanzo’s lips, the careful silk of his voice, is enough that Hanzo feels Jesse’s control of him slip, just for a moment.

A moment is all Hanzo needs.

He drops his weight, lets gravity take him down towards his bow. By the time Jesse has realized what he’s doing, it’s too late, Hanzo is rolling over onto his back, arrow nocked and bow drawn. The expression on Jesse’s face should make him feel powerful.

It does not.

Hanzo lets loose the arrow. He does not miss.

Jesse lets out a wounded hiss, stumbling back from the force. It knocks his hat clear from his head, but Jesse hardly seems concerned with it, a hand curling up to wrap around the body of the arrow where it’s sunk into his chest, dead centre to his heart.

Hanzo’s elbows are scraped to hell from the fall, but he hoists himself up on them to watch, heart caught in his throat.

“Jesus fucking Christ - _holy shit_.” Jesse’s hand tightens around the arrow, yanking it from his chest with a grunt. Hanzo watches as his metal hand snaps it clean in half, the pieces falling to the ground in splinters. His hair is in his face, and when he looks up, Hanzo feels every nerve in his body completely freeze.

If he’d thought Jesse had looked terrifying the night he killed Seamus, it is nothing compared to now. Then, he had been cold and dismissive, like a callous god above them all. Now, his face is _furious_ ; a god wronged, and ready to rain down his wrath.

“Sweetheart,” he growls, “that fucking _hurt._ ”

Hanzo doesn't have even a moment to react to that; to pray to a god he does not believe in, or to beg for mercy (although he would not, even if he could).

Jesse’s hand is in his hair, his metal one, dragging him from the ground so that Hanzo has to stagger upright, fingers scrabbling along the unforgiving steel of Jesse’s arm so that he is not scalped. There are hot tears prickling at the corner of his eyes that he cannot help but are humiliating all the same.

“Oh, darlin’, I knew I had my work cut out for me with you, but this is something else. If I realized what was going on in that pretty head of yours I’d never have left you alone.”

“Let me go, demon,” Hanzo chokes out. His fingertips feel raw, and he can faintly see the streaks of rust coloured blood he’s left on Jesse’s arm. His vision wavers in and out of focus, and when Jesse yanks his head to the side he’s helpless but to stagger with the momentum.

“We’re going to have a talk,” Jesse says, in a voice that sounds far more dangerous than welcoming. “Just the two of us, hey? See if we can’t get this big ol’ misunderstanding sorted out.”

Hanzo doesn’t know how but he finds the energy to snarl, “I’m not going anywhere with you.” If his mouth wasn’t so dry he’d spit on him.

To his shock, Jesse laughs. There’s something warm pressing against his mouth, and distantly he realizes it’s Jesse’s thumb, his human one, passing along his lip. “The mouth on you, sweetheart,” Jesse says, and Hanzo faintly thinks this isn’t the first time he’s heard that. “Lucky for you, it wasn’t a request.”

_What do you mean?_ Hanzo wants to say, but he doesn’t get the words out in time.

The grip in his hand tightens, and then he’s being pulled closer, Jesse’s mouth against his ear.

“ _Sleep_ ,” he says, in a voice like fog.

And, like magic, Hanzo _does_.

.

Hanzo wakes up to an aching headache and a dark room. For a second, he thinks he has finally reached hell. Only it smells of cheap whisky and cigarettes, and Hanzo doesn’t think even the devil himself would be that cruel.

“Well,” Jesse drawls, “look who finally woke up and joined us.”

Hanzo sits up slowly. He’s in what looks like … a cabin, of all things. The bed he’s on is saggy and uncomfortable, and the sheets smell of salt and brimstone. Above him, a fan turns slowly in a squeaky circle, pushing hot air sluggishly around the room.

Last he checked the weather had been cool and crisp. It certainly doesn’t feel like it now.

“Where did you take me, demon?” Hanzo asks hoarsely, hands fisting in the sheets either side of him.

Jesse’s sitting at a small table by the end of the bed, feet crossed on the tabletop and smoking steadily out a window. His shirt is half open and he looks strangely bedraggled, all things considered. He seems perfectly at ease, and, as Hanzo watches, he puffs a flawless smoke ring in his direction and smiles. “The way I figure it,” Jesse says, “you and I are long overdue for a chat.”

Hanzo’s quiver is gone, and he can see his bow sitting atop the table by Jesse’s feet. Next to it is Jesse’s gun, gleaming in the dim light. His heart stumbles on the next beat. “I have nothing to say to you. If you’re going to kill me -.”

Jesse groans, tossing his feet to the ground and leaning forward so that his chair creaks. He looks positively aggrieved. “That,” he says, pointing at Hanzo with his cigar, “that right there is our problem. Hell in a handbasket, sweetheart; I ain’t ever met a man so eager to die.”

“I shot you,” Hanzo says stiffly. “I summoned you, trapped you, and _shot_ you.”

“Well,” Jesse says, scratching the scruff on his chin. He gives Hanzo a roguish grin. “I mean, you certainly _tried_.”

Now that he’s leaning forward, Hanzo can see the pucker of flesh where his arrow pierced. It’s perfect, right above where Jesse’s heart would be if he had one. It looks more like a burn than a scar, really.

“I do not know what you want from me,” Hanzo says slowly.

“It ain’t so complicated, sugar,” Jesse says. “But something,” he pauses to tap at the scar on his chest, “tells me you wouldn’t believe me right now if I told you. Ain’t a lick of trust between us, is there?”

“You are a _demon_.”

“Didn’t seem to bother you when you summoned me that first time to beg for the life of the brother you killed,” Jesse says, voice flat.

Hanzo does not wince but it is a very near thing. He wonders if there will ever be a time where the scars Genji left on him won’t be raw enough to hurt.

“That was -.”

“Different?” Jesse suggests, and his face is amused but his eyes are cold. “It really ain’t. I’m the same thing now as I was then. And as much as I like your spitfire, I gotta tell you sweetheart, I’m confused where all this hostility is coming from. As far as I can see, you’ve been acting downright squirrelly since I took you to Ange to fix the mess that punk made of your knee.”

Hanzo is a good actor. He’s had to be, given the life he’s lived. He is not good enough, however, to fool a demon.

Something flickers in Jesse’s eyes. “Oh,” he says, and he draws it out like spun sugar, sweet and aching. He leans back in the chair again and looks at Hanzo, a smile creeping on his face that has more of an edge to it than Hanzo would really like.

Hanzo feels helpless. It is not a feeling he is fond of it. “I do not think,” he says, so very careful with his words, “that I truly realized what you were capable of until that night.”

Jesse looks at his face and sighs. “Alright,” he says. “I see this isn’t working. Fair enough. I can’t _make_ you trust me, I suppose.”

Hanzo opens his mouth to respond, but Jesse moves before he can. Confused, Hanzo watches as Jesse picks up the gun beside him. He considers it for a moment, glinting in the light, and tosses it so it lands with a dull _thump_ on the bed beside Hanzo.

Hanzo looks at it and then back to Jesse again.

“What -.”

“ _Pick up the gun.”_

Jesse’s voice is like smoke, thick and heavy and just as likely to suffocate him. Hanzo wants to say _you are not my keeper,_ or _I do not do the bidding of demon spawn._ He wants to say a great many things, but it’s like his mouth has been glued shut and he watches in horror as his fingers wrap around the grip of the gun.

Slowly, he raises it off the bed, steady and even.

Hanzo does not know what is happening to him. It’s like his body has been rewired, connected to the smooth flow of Jesse’s voice. The thought that Jesse’s been able to do this to him the whole time is bigger than his brain can even comprehend.

“That’s good, sugar. That’s real good. Now, _put it to your temple.”_

_No_ , thinks Hanzo in furious horror.

But he does. The feeling of the tip of the barrel pressed against the side of his head is like ice. Jesse is sitting still, chin resting on the folded knuckles of his mechanical arm. His face is dangerously impassive, and Hanzo has never wanted to scream so badly in all his life.

Genji is in his head again, rattling almost as loud as the shaking of Hanzo’s terrified bones.

“Good,” Jesse drawls. “You’re doing so well. Now… _shoot_.”

_No, do not, do not -_

Hanzo cannot even close his eyes. He’s looking Jesse dead in the face as when his finger pulls the trigger.

_Click_.

For a second Hanzo sits there, still waiting to die, before that sound can register. There are no bullets in the gun.

Just like that, the spell is broken. His breath explodes out of him like he’s been punched. His fingers spring open and the gun falls, hitting him painfully on the knee as it goes down, but Hanzo’s shaking so much he can barely feel it. His blood is pounding, heart on fire, and he clutches at his aching chest as he glares up at Jesse, gasping.

“What - what did you do to me?”

“Hurts, don’t it?” Jesse says sympathetically. He rubs at the small scar on his chest. “Bet it feels a little like getting shot by a blessed arrow.”

There’s not enough breath in Hanzo’s lungs for words. He feels dizzy, and vaguely sick. He’s reasonably sure he’s shaking all over. His head is swimming, and so is his vision.

“You doin’ alright there, sweetheart?” Jesse asks casually. “You’re looking a little off colour.”

“What is - what is this?”

Faintly, he hears the creaking of a chair, and when he looks Jesse is beside the bed now. He reaches out to smooth Hanzo’s sweaty hair back from his forehead, and there’s not enough strength in Hanzo’s quivering body to pull away.

Jesse’s eyes are midnight-black, and his voice is fireside-smoky. “Now that I’ve got your attention, _darlin’_ , how about you sit all pretty and quiet, and we’ll have ourselves a nice little chat.”  

 


	6. Chapter 6

As far as Hanzo can tell, the cabin Jesse’s taken him to appears to be approximately in the middle of nowhere. Wherever Hanzo looks there’s nothing but sand and more sand, and, if he’s lucky, maybe some rocks.

“It’s the middle of the New Mexico desert, sweetheart,” Jesse drawls whenever Hanzo tries in vain to get something out of him. “You’re seeing all it has to give.” And then, like clockwork: “Are you ready to talk yet?”

The answer is always, inevitably, _no_. Hanzo is not ready to talk; doesn’t even know where to begin.

“Are you going to make me?”

“Now, darlin’, you know I’m not.”

“If that were true you’d let me out of this cabin.”

“I ain’t stoppin’ you. Front door’s right there. Feel free to pick a direction and start walking.”

Hanzo is tempted, but he’s also not foolish. He’s injured, resourceless, and the desert is immeasurably vast. He has no clue where he is, other than Jesse’s useless drop about New Mexico, and all it takes is one mistake out here to lose your grip on everything.

Hanzo is too proud to call what he spends his time doing sulking, but it feels dangerously close to it. That first day, after Jesse makes Hanzo put a gun to his head, he refuses to say a word.

If Jesse wants to talk, Hanzo cannot stop him, but he doesn’t have to be an active participant. It may be petty but Hanzo does not consider himself above it.

It’d be more satisfying if Jesse were there to bear witness to it, but often he is not. He comes and goes as he pleases, wherever it is his demonic business takes him. He does not tell Hanzo where it is he leaves for, but the look on his face says that he would, if only Hanzo would ask.

Hanzo does not. He refuses to give Jesse the satisfaction of conversation.

All the same, by the end of the second day, Hanzo is well and truly sick of the cabin and everything it contains. He’s counted all the screws holding up the walls, watched the endless repetitions of the sluggish fan, paced every single inch of the floorboards.

Outside, it’s not much better. The view is spectacular, truly, but it’s also largely empty. Hanzo can see clear for miles and miles, but all those miles offer him is more god forsaken _sand_.

If Hanzo lives through this, he doesn’t think he will ever be able to look at a desert the same. Out here there is nothing _but_ space, and yet Hanzo has never felt so trapped all his life. It’s worse, even, than living with his clan had been, which is not something he ever would have thought he’d think.

Life then had been a prison, but it had been opulent one. For many years Hanzo had even fooled himself into believing that just because he was allowed to walk free of shackles that his will was truly his own.

It hadn’t been, in the end, but he thinks even a false freedom is better than no freedom at all.

And god, is he _bored_. He thinks he’d kill a man for a book right now; he’s certainly killed for less.

On the third day, Jesse stuffs his hat over his untamable hair and says, “I’m heading out, darlin’. Is there anything you want? I know you humans are awful fragile, and I ain’t aiming to have you wither away.”

Hanzo, who is sitting on the front deck, head in his hands, looks up and offers Jesse a truly foul glare. “You know exactly what it is I want,” he says.

“I’ll take that as a no then,” Jesse says cheerfully, and Hanzo hates him with an astonishing passion. “It’ll probably be dark before I’m home. Don’t wait up.” He winks, but before Hanzo can open his mouth to say something sufficiently scathing he’s gone, leaving behind nothing but startling stillness.

Somewhere far off, Hanzo hears a coyote howling. The sun is deadly hot on his shoulders and the sand beneath his toes burns.

Hanzo sighs and disappears back into the cabin.

.

There’s no clock in Jesse’s strange little house, so it’s impossible for Hanzo to truly keep track of the passage of time. He wonders if that’s intentional, he’s heard of jailors doing similar things to keep their prisoners compliant, but even he must admit that particularly level of malevolence seems beyond Jesse.

Jesse is terrifying, but Hanzo does not think he’s cruel. Or if he is, he’s certainly done an excellent job hiding it thus far.

Outside, the sun sinks and the moon rises. The temperature plummets and Hanzo strips the bed free of all the covers, bundling them over his shoulders unrepentantly. He’s sure he looks faintly ridiculous, but there’s nobody out here to see him but the occasional spider that crawls out from the cracks in the floorboards.

Two and a half days out here with nobody but Jesse for company, and nothing but his own stinging pride to keep him warm. He’s starting to wonder if this isn’t New Mexico at all - if Jesse has finally whisked him off to hell.

He catalogued the entire contents of the cabin his first night here, so it’s the work of seconds to find Jesse’s hidden alcohol stash, tucked in the medicine cabinet in the bathroom beside a lonely toothbrush.

It’s whisky, which is fine, but it’s bottom shelf, which is barely tolerable. Hanzo shouldn’t be surprised. He doesn’t think he’s ever accused Jesse of being a man of fine taste. He pops the cap off, tosses it into the sink where it rattles, and slouches back into the cabin, drinking it straight from the bottle.

The burn is sharp enough to make his eyes water, but Hanzo is nothing if not a seasoned drinker and he powers through it effortlessly.

He doesn’t know how long Jesse plans to keep him stranded here, but he would put good money on it being as long as it takes for Hanzo to give in. Hanzo has the capacity for patience, but over the years it’s been stretched thin. Jesse, he thinks, could stand in the same place for a century without any effort whatsoever.

The benefits of immortality, one must suppose.

The fastest way to end this would be to just - _talk_.

Jesse makes it sound so simple. Maybe it is. For other people, at the very least.

But Hanzo is a man who does not have a surplus of words, who does not like to feel anything approaching vulnerable, and Jesse absolutely has his own agenda in all this. Hanzo just doesn’t know what it is yet, but he intends to find out.

He takes another gulp of whisky, shuffles over to the cleanest looking corner the cabin has to offer, and gingerly lowers himself to the floor. Like this, with his back to the wall, he has a clear view of the door, the desert beyond, and everything else this new hellscape of his might have to offer.

What does Jesse want him to say, exactly? That he’s scared - that he’s _terrified_? They both already know that. It’s not a secret, even if Hanzo wishes it were. A man does not try and trap and exorcise a demon without a particularly strong motivator, and there’s nothing stronger than existential dread.

He drinks again. It’s finally hitting him, and he welcomes the buzz with open arms.

There is not a thing they could talk about that Hanzo wants to discuss. He is a man with very little left to him in this life, and he thinks that Jesse does not entirely understand how cruel it is to try and strip it from him before he’s ready.

Another drink. It doesn’t even burn anymore. Good. He wants as little of his inhibitions to remain by the time Jesse gets back. It’ll make this easier. It’s like anesthetic, he thinks. For a particularly nasty operation.

It’s not every day Hanzo plans to bare his heart to a demon.

He doesn't know how long he sits in that corner covered in Jesse’s threadbare blankets, drinking his weight in cheap whisky, but it’s long enough that the moon is incredibly high in the sky when Jesse returns.

“Well, I see you found my whisky,” he says, looking down at him amusedly, thumbs tucked into belt loops. “And my blankets.”

“You do not need either of them.”

“Just because I’m a demon doesn’t mean I don’t feel the cold. Have a heart, Hanzo. Share a little.”

“I am not in the mood for your flirting or your games,” Hanzo says flatly. He gestures to the floor in front of him and says, “Sit.”

To his utter surprise, Jesse does. He folds himself easily down on to the floor scant inches away from Hanzo and holds out his hand for the bottle. Hanzo considers for a second and then decides that he’s drunk enough already that he can relinquish it to its rightful owner.

The grin Jesse gives him when Hanzo hands him the bottle is sharp. He knocks it back, throat bobbing and moonlight painting his brown skin bronze. “Good stuff,” he says thickly, wiping his mouth with the back of his wrist. “Even if you barely left me the dregs.”

Hanzo smiles thinly at him and readjusts the blankets over his shoulders. “You wanted to talk,” he says, and Jesse’s attention snaps to him immediately. Hanzo feels strangely powerful.

“You’ve made it abundantly clear you don’t want to, darlin’. What’s changed your mind?”

“Oh, no,” Hanzo says. “I did not say my mind was changed. Do not make assumptions, demon.”

“I really ain’t following here. Take a little pity on me?”

Hanzo holds out his hand for the whisky. “I do not wish to talk,” he says, mouth around the bottle. “But I do not relish the idea of being locked in this hellhole of yours.”

“Now, that’s just plain rude. You’re a guest in my home, you ought to show it a little respect.”

Hanzo is mildly surprised to hear Jesse call this little cabin _home_ and it must show on his face because Jesse quirks him a smile that’s a little smug. “Something you wanna share with the class?”

“Is this truly your home?”

“Well, one of them, to be fair. I ain’t here so much these days, but I’m awful fond of it.”

“Do you think it wise to show your enemy where your base is?”

“You’re not my enemy, Hanzo. You’re a pain in my goddamn _ass_ , that’s for sure, but there ain’t nothing you could do to me that I’m really worried about. I don’t think you’d try it, either.”

“Three days ago,” Hanzo says, unimpressed. “I summoned you, trapped you, and shot you; all with the intention of banishing you.”

“Now, listen here,” Jesse drawls, reaching out to pry the bottle from Hanzo’s hands. His fingers are surprisingly gentle, and he sets it out of his reach. “The way I figure it, that’s what we gotta talk about. Tell me, sweetheart, why did you feel the need to go and do a thing like that?”

Without something to hold onto, Hanzo’s hands feel achingly empty. His grip on the situation as a whole is tentative at best, but the whisky warming his gut does a good job of keeping his courage steady. “You know why.”

“Because you were scared.”

“If you know, why did you ask? I am not made of stone, and I do not think you understand how terrifying you are, demon.”

“Alright,” Jesse says. “Maybe I don’t. Explain it to me, then.”

His face is blank, chin rested on his folded knuckles. Hanzo is a little impressed, truth be told, with how well Jesse is taking this. Hanzo meets his eyes and says, “It is not that you killed Seamus that bothers me; it is that in that moment, I was certain that you would kill me too.”

“But I didn’t.”

“No,” Hanzo allows. “You did not. But I became aware that this is a feeling I am going to carry with me until you finally do, or until something else gets me first. I am not scared of death, and I am not scared of hell - what I fear is this uncertainty, this lack of control. How many more moments like Seamus will I have to live through? How many more times will I sit there, as helpless as a _child_ , while you look at me like a bug waiting to be squashed?”

Hanzo shudders, pressing the heels of his palms against his eyes and takes deep, steadying breaths. He can feel his blankets slipping from his shoulders, but he cannot bear to look at Jesse right now. “This is why I did not want to _talk_ ,” he spits.

It’s silent for a moment but for the faint whir of the fan and the distant desert noises. There’s a creek, and then he can feel Jesse’s fingertips grazing his skin as he pulls the blankets back over his shoulders, bundling him up and smoothing them out with a hand that warms Hanzo’s chest.

“And that’s why I _did_ want to talk,” Jesse says. Hanzo isn’t looking at him still, but he’s near enough that his breath catches Hanzo’s skin. “I’m a demon, not a mind reader. I knew I’d scared you, but I didn’t know what was running through your fool head.” His knuckles gently rap on Hanzo’s forehead, strangely soft and affectionate. “You’re a tough son of a gun, Hanzo. I forget you’re human sometimes.”

Hanzo finally looks up, sharp retort on his tongue, but it stutters and dies when he realizes that Jesse is sitting far closer than he’d realized. He’s just drunk enough to find it not necessarily as unpleasant as he might have thought.

It’d be a foolish man to ever say that Jesse isn’t handsome. Hanzo has known that from the start, remembers thinking on it that very first night where Jesse had walked through the snow with black eyes and a death wish smile

Unnerved, he leans back a little, struggling to regain some balance. “What is that supposed to mean?”

Jesse shrugs. “I’ve met demons with less steel in their spine than you have,” he says. “You told me that I don’t know how terrifying I am, and you’re right; but I think the same could be said for you. You said you’re scared of not having control, of uncertainty - there ain’t many men out there who’d feel that and then go out and do something about it.”

“You are… pleased I shot you?”

“Shit, sugar. That arrow hurt like a goddamn bitch. You ever point that pretty bow at me again and I’m gonna snap all your fingers, not matter how fond of you I might be. I’m pleased that you’ve got a stubborn streak the size of Texas, and I ain’t ever gotta worry about you looking after yourself.”

Discreetly, Hanzo goes to draw his hands out of sight, a little concerned by Jesse’s threat, but Jesse laughs and catches his wrist, drawing one hand up, closer, and placing a light kiss at his pulse point.

Hanzo stares at him coolly. Jesse grins, unrepentant, kissing the base of Hanzo’s palm this time, stubble catching on his skin. “What is it you think you are doing?”  Hanzo asks.

“Not breaking your fingers, that I promise you,” Jesse says. “That was a bad threat on my behalf. I like your hands, I ain’t got no desire to do them ill.”

Hanzo pulls his hands away, Jesse’s fingers slipping along his. “Have you been listening to me at all, demon?”

“Jesse. I think we’re past the point where you pretend you don’t remember my name unless it’s convenient for you.”

“Jesse,” Hanzo says, willing to humour him, if only for the moment. “You are not nearly so charming as you think you are.”

Jesse raises a brow at him. “I’ve been listening,” he says. “Have you?”

Hanzo does not know what to make of that, sits there dumbly starting up at Jesse for a very long moment that feels almost heavier than the blankets keeping out the chill. After a minute, Jesse sighs and gets to his feet, holding his hand out.

“C’mon, you’ll catch your death down there.”

Bemused, Hanzo lets himself be pulled to his feet. Jesse’s rough palm lingers on his for just a little too long to be entirely benevolent.

“Tell me what I can do,” Jesse says.

“What?”

“Tell me what I can do to ease your mind,” Jesse says, patiently. “You’re worried about control and uncertainty; what can I do to help?”

“You could perhaps give me my soul back,” Hanzo says, an incredibly weak attempt at a joke to lighten the strange mood caught between them.

“Sorry, sugar. That’s one contract you can’t slip, I’m afraid. There’s gotta be something I can do - or not do - to ease your worries though.”

Hanzo raises a brow. “You want to… help me?”

“Hanzo,” Jesse says, sounding about at his wits end. “How long we known each other by this point? Three years? More? Does it really come as such a shock to you that I don’t actively want you sufferin’ on my account?”

Hanzo supposes it should not. He thought as much before; Jesse is not kind exactly, but he is not heartless either. Still, he cannot help but be a little suspicious of the sudden charity. “What is it you get out of it?”

“Ideally, your trust,” Jesse says honestly. “But at the very least, I’ll settle for you not acting a like a skittish horse every time I get within two feet of you. This is as much for my benefit as it is yours, if we’re being truthful here.”

Hanzo considers this for a moment. “I don’t understand,” he says. “Why do you not just… kill me. Would that not be easier and quicker for you?”

“Yes,” Jesse says, brutally blunt. “You’re a right handful even on your best days. Lucky for you, sweetheart, I’m a man that likes a bit of a challenge. Call me foolish, but I like that spark of yours. Besides, spending time in your company isn’t what I’d call a hardship, even if I’m starting to think you’re thicker than a bag of cement.”

Hanzo lets the insult roll off him as he considers Jesse’s offer. Eventually he says, “The other day, when you…” He wavers for a second, lacking the words to describe what had happened. “With the gun.”

“Ah,” Jesse says.

“That. I do not like that you kept that from me. That you could … control me as you wished.”

“I still can,” Jesse says breezily. He taps Hanzo’s chest, right over his heart. “You signed a contract, and all of you is _mine_. I could have been playing puppets with you this whole time, sugar.”

A chill ghosts down Hanzo’s spine. “That is -.”

“- But,” Jesse says, cutting over him, “I _didn’t_. And I don’t plan to do it again unless you _really_ make me.”

“If you do that again,” Hanzo says, as calmly as he can when his heart is pounding in his chest, “I will kill you; no matter where I have to go to get the means to do it.”

“Alright,” Jesse says, far easier than Hanzo would have thought. He sticks out his palm and tilts his ridiculous hat from his face. “We’ll call it a deal, sugar.”

Cautiously, Hanzo clutches his blankets with one hand and reaches out to take Jesse’s hand with his other. He’s expecting a shake, what he gets instead is Jesse jerking him forward, sending him tripping over the uneven floor and right into his thick chest.

Before he can get a word out, Jesse’s hands are tilting his chin up, and then his mouth is on his.

There’s a second where Hanzo is incredibly confused; and then he feels it, the faint burn on Jesse’s skin where they’re touching, the frantic thumping of his heart that he can’t possibly hope to control.

It’s not as bad as it was that first time; Genji is not screaming in Hanzo’s head, and the intensity is transitory at best. Jesse’s mouth is hot enough to burn, and he kisses long and syrupy sweet, holding Hanzo still so he has no choice but to follow his lead or get swept away.

The heat dies down and Hanzo’s pulse slows. Jesse pulls back, eyes black, and grins. “This is how demons make bargains, sweetheart. Don’t forget.”

It’s an effort to find his voice, but Hanzo manages. “A warning might have been nice.”

“Sorry, darlin’. I quite like the way your surprise tastes.” His tongue darts out along his bottom lip. “Gotta say, you make that whisky taste damn good too.”

Yet another thing Hanzo does not know how to take. He pulls his hand out of Jesse’s grip. “Are we finally done? May I leave?”

Jesse takes the dismissal in stride, stepping back and gesturing grandly. “I never did stop you.”

“You intend to make me walk back to civilization?”

“I didn’t say that now, did I? I’m just thinking this little trip might be better to do sober. So far, you’re been unconscious every time I’ve whisked you away, and I gotta tell you I don’t think this is an experience you wanna have while tipsy.”

Hanzo considers that for a moment and allows that Jesse may have a point. He does not know the ins and outs of interdimensional travel, but he does not want to discover them while his control over his stomach is loose at best.

He turns and shuffles back to the bed, even as he despairs at the thought of yet _another_ night spent in the damn thing. “Tomorrow,” Hanzo says primly as he shrugs the blankets off and throws them back where they belong. “Tomorrow, you take me back to where you stole me away. With any luck, my hotel hopefully will not have thrown out all my belongings.”

“I guess we’ll have to see,” Jesse agrees amicably. “I’ll leave you be then, sugar. I’ll come get you in the morning. Sleep well.”

It’s on the tip of Hanzo’s tongue to ask where Jesse’s going, but he catches himself at the very last moment. He can appreciate their tentative truce for what it is, but he has no eagerness to begin knocking down all their boundaries in one night.

As far as Hanzo is concerned, this is a working relationship, and Jesse is free to do what he wishes without being held accountable. It’s exactly what Hanzo would want for himself.

“Fine,” he says, crawling into the bed. “Try not to die.”

“Well, sugar, if I didn’t know any better I might think you cared.”

“ _Goodnight_ , Jesse,” Hanzo says.

He’s not looking, but he hears Jesse’s quiet laugh. “Sleep well, Hanzo.”

He thinks he feels Jesse’s hand brushing the breadth of his shoulders, but when he turns to look Jesse is gone; it’s just Hanzo, stashed away alone in the cabin like the rest of Jesse’s possessions.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thank you all so much for the response on the last chapter!! i don't know where ya'll came from, but i was thrilled with all the comments, i cannot possibly thank you all enough. as always, find me as glenflower on tumblr.


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